Writing for Sanity's Sake

From 2014….

I grew up in the fifties in America. I was a great time. The middle class was growing. Most of our little families in the mill town where I live were able to buy the houses which had been duplex apartments owned by the company and convert them into nice little single family homes. My Dad was able to buy his first new car in 1966. A Ford fairlane. It was a pretty good little car. Had a 289, 8 cylinder motor. We ate more hamburgers by 1967, where we had eaten pinto beans and corn bread back in 1958. I think we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken to eat out for the first time in the late sixties. I was able to buy two comic books a week for a quarter a piece in the late sixties, where I had only gotten one per week back in the fifties, even though they were cheaper. I found some friends who had been collecting since the early fifties and was able to catch up on some of the series I had been wanting to read, but couldn’t afford.

By the time I graduated High School in 1968, things were beginning to change in America….and they haven’t stopped changing since that year.

John Kennedy was gone. He left in 1963. He was killed in November of that year. It was the same year that Martin Luther King had given his famous “I have a dream” speech in Washington. That had been in August of ’63. I didn’t get to see it in person, but the news carried it. I remember it well. I remember him saying:

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day

live in a nation Where they will not be judged by the color

of their skin but by the content of their character. l I have

a dream … I have a dream that one day in Alabama,

with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips

dripping with the words of interposition and nullification,

one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black

girls will he able to join hands with little white boy’s and

white girls as sisters and brothers.”

Sisters and brothers. He had that dream.

Up until that year, 1968, we still had Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But they were both assassinated that year. Fighters who would fight for freedom were gone. Heroes who would fight for all people of all colors and all creeds…who would replace them? Who could replace them? Who has replaced them?

I look at the people who are in this world of 2016 and I wonder…..what have we become a nation of? I realize there has always been hatred and division in America. America is a country which is grounded in division. We were born from division in the Revolutionary war. We killed each other during the Civil war over the division between North and South. We have been divided many times since then. But I will have to say I have never, ever witnessed the hatred and vitriole, and the pure purposelessness which I have seen recently.

I am looking very hard for some of those heroes like we had back in the sixites….

We think our brain controls everything, but sometimes I am not so sure, especially when it comes to our deepest most “heartfelt” emotions. That’s right, heartfelt..from the heart.

For eons, before mankind starting looking at everything from a scientific standpoint, humans thought the heart to be the center of all our emotions. Not until the age of enlightenment, and the acceptance of scientific methods did it become widely acceptable that our brains were the center of everything which make us human. Yet we still continue to associate our hearts with love.

All Valentines usually have some tie in with hearts. We give someone our heart when we fall in love. We still get broken hearts. We bless people’s hearts, not their brains!

Of course I know very well, that science is correct yet I wonder why my heart soars, and swells when my little ones do something loving. I feel it with a flutter in my chest, not in my head. I feel that warmth deep in my core when I think of the love I hold for my wife, my family. I still remember the gut wrenching pain which welled up from within me and the sobs of grief which racked me at the deaths of my parents and my daughter. If my brain was in control on those days, it wasn’t doing a very good job.

I really don’t think that even the world’s smartest scientists know everything about the way we humans are wired up. They got the schematics down pat..right down to the DNA. But they haven’t come up with the blueprints for the soul yet. I don’t think they ever will because our Creator hid them….deep down inside our heart.

Thinking back to my childhood, I can remember thinking that I would die young. My Mom was terrified of dying, and unfortunately being associated with that attitude at such a young age somewhat tainted my view of living. It wasn’t really her fault, but was a symptom of her mental illness. Of course, I didn’t know that.

Living was something you did super, ultra carefully. You didn’t want to open yourself up to possibly getting killed by doing something stupid….like playing baseball ( you might get hit in the head with a baseball and get killed….yes it was that bad). I therefore didn’t play little league until my last eligible year…although it turned out I was pretty good at it. Made the All Stars, hit some home runs, had fun!

I tried to staunch my fears when I was raising my kids, but didn’t do well in some cases. They were lucky to have a stable Mom, because I was prone to panic attacks, and had irrational fears of many things: flying, bad storms, etc. I know my kids can remember. I regret those shortcomings, but at the time, I had no solutions. Later on in life, I got medication for my problems, and settled down somewhat. I say somewhat, because I still harbored some of those irrational fears. I did overcome my fear of flying and got a house with a dang good storm shelter!

I feel like that in 2010, when I had my bypass surgery, I became much less fearful of death. I became more capable of living in the day, and appreciating the beauty of the world around me, and being ever so grateful for the family I have to share my life with. Sometimes I still fear the unknown, but not nearly to the extent that I used to.

At my age, I surely don’t have to worry about “dying young” anymore. I do however, certainly want to continue to be able to build memories with my little ones as long as I possibly can.

My Mom lived to be almost eighty one years old, and only in her very final last days do I believe she found some inner strength, and sacrificed her fear of death to the ability to find some peace. I was there with her…almost all her family was there.

Build happy memories friends and family, and do not be fearful of the unknown!

Peace.

There is solace here in this life if you will seek it. There is the smell of the fresh, clear winter air and the smell of a baby’s sweet clean hair. There’s that wonderful smell of homemade chili cooking on the stove.

There’s the sight of a huge yellow moon hanging in the night sky, almost bright as the sun. The pillowy clouds filling the fall skies, like a huge warm quilt your Grandma made you.

There’s the love of family around you as often as you can get them. The tenderness, the touching. The temper tantrums and the discipline. The togetherness in this life, and even beyond.

There are these things and more to sustain us if we will only let it. If we drop our obsessions with what others are doing, what they are saying. If we concentrate our efforts on the things that really should make us happy.

The things that really matter.

Rambling thoughts from many years past:

There are far, far too many children with cancer and other serious diseases in our world. Far too many young adults dying with “old people” diseases:

“There are far, far too many chemicals, poisons, drugs, in our water and food”

There is far, far too much hatred one for the other in our world. Far too much war and atrocities being committed by humans against other humans:

“Hate is not a hereditary quality, but a learned behavior”

There is far, far too much torture of our planet going on. Forests are disappearing, oceans are polluted, the air is filled with noxious smoke, the earth itself is being drilled into incessantly, pumped full of hot water and steam in order to choke out a gallon of black goo…:

“When the Earth dies, all humans will also die. As far as I know there are no outposts on Mars”

There are far, far too few children learning to put a pencil to a piece of paper and write:

“When the plug is pulled, how will knowledge be communicated?”

I used to be able to pull my car in my Grandfather’s yard and do just about anything to it which needed doing to make it run. I changed points and plugs, solenoid switches and alternators, starters, rings and pistons. Now when I open the hood of my car all I see are computer plug ins. The one thing I recognize is the battery.

I used to check books out of the library to read, or go to one of the numerous used book stores to buy a book to read, or to trade for one. Now, I buy a “book” online and they send a few bytes of information on the internet and I read it on an electronic pad. I still own lots and lots of physical books though…including a lot of instruction manuals and textbooks.

There are far, far too many people who think their God lives inside a big brick building:

“If you make room in your heart, God will be there. If God is in your heart, you have made room” You will know, there won’t be any doubt.

Peace….

How can we know truth? The truth is, that there IS no absolute truth. There are laws. There are rules.

There are laws of nature…but they are not truth.

There are laws of physics. But those are not absolute truths.

There are rules of religion, but they are not truths.

There are laws of governments, but those certainly are not truths.

How do we arrive at the truth? If the truth lies within the human mind, we will never arrive at the truth, because the human mind is not capable. We devised the rules, and they are ever changing. No two human beings live by the exact same truths. We may believe some things in common, but not all things.

Siblings, Sons and daughters, Mothers and Fathers, Husbands and wives, partners, lovers, friends. None know truth exactly the same.

Just remember this the next time you wonder why someone does not think the same way you do, or when you cannot change someone’s mind.

We all live within our own separate Universe, and even a perfect circle looks imperfect to some.



I have to wonder, as the character Maximus says in “Gladiator”: “Are you not yet entertained? Is this not what you came here for?”

Westerners, especially Americans, have shifted from a society which valued truth, honesty, and hard work, to a culture which waits daily for “the next big thing”. We wait with baited breath for the next tragedy to be broadcast on our sixty inch screen televisions, so we can sit back and enjoy it….revel in it like a lion rolling in it’s own crap and then getting up and strutting around because he loves the smell so much. We love the smell.

We drive past the horrific accidents on the highway and turn our heads, craning our necks to catch a glimpse of some blood and gore. Just like the Romans at the coliseum.

Our grandparents worked in the fields, and the factories from dusk til dawn. Most of them then came home, ate their supper, read their Bible, or some other book…and then went to bed. They did this so their children and grandchildren could have a better life. And how do we repay them?

We became a society more obsessed with ourselves, and our carnal needs….the things that make us feel good, than with any other thing. We take more pleasure in anything closely resembling the old gladiatorial contests than we do anything else. Think about it, is that not correct?

We would rather have someone, or a group of someones tell us what to believe is truth, as long as we have our bread and circuses. Why did the emperors rule Rome for so long?

“Are you not yet entertained?”

If not yet, then what will it take?

We have 4 or 5 televisions per households, computers, mobile phones with apps for everything. People cannot cook a meal without their tablets sitting on their counters tuned to YouTube, telling them how to do it.

Our weekends are taken up with our modern day gladiatorial contests for which our children are trained almost from the moment of their birth to participate in, while we wildly scream, get mad, shoot off fireworks, get in fights over, bet on…all in order to be entertained. But it’s not enough.

We can no longer tell the truth from fiction. We cannot tell scripted from spontaneous. We cannot tell sincerity from sarcasm, bullying from bravery.

Our ancestors would be surprised at where we now stand. We stand right in the center of the coliseum with a bloody sword in our hands and yell out: “are you not yet entertained?”

We are not.

I wonder how other people “see” their memories, in their mind. Mine come bubbling up in little gray colorless bits and pieces most of the time. If I sit and purposefully try and remember some specific event which has taken place in my life, I fail to rake much information up into the pile.

I think the reason I write so much is because once I get onto a tangent of thought, once I get a good smell of a past brain remnant, then more and more starts boiling and cooking up to the surface.

I was watching little Eli today, and the thought just popped into sight about Kirsten sleeping on my tummy when she was a tiny baby. I worked at Westinghouse on a night shift back in the early 70’s, and Paula was a Southern Bell operator. She had odd hours. A lot of times when Paula was at work, and it was “baby nap time” I would just lay down on the couch and lay Kirsten on my tummy. It was already quite ample and I had no fear of her rolling off…She hadn’t mastered rolling over yet.

One day though, I was really out of it, and so was she.. and the phone rang. I came out a full sleep and jumped up…And rolled little Kisi on the floor. It was only a short distance and nothing was hurt but her feelings. I do think I took the phone off the hook after that.

File that one under “how children survive inexperienced parents”

The 1980’s and half of the 90’s were a blur. I was trying to get into the highly competitive world of songwriting in Nashville. I wrote hundreds of songs. I thought up thousands of titles and hooks. I played my guitar til my fingers bled. I went to Nashville once a week after work for songwriters meetings, and drove back home in the middle of the night. I sang three times at the Bluebird cafe, twice on open Mike night, and once after an audition. I had folks tell me, move here! You’ll get the contacts, you’ll make the friends, and you’ll make it either as a singer or writer, or both. I made demos on a regular basis and put them on cassette tapes and mailed, and mailed. I called and called. I could never pull the trigger and make the move though. My thirties and then my forties came and went. There was no “The Voice” It was way before “American Idol” Long before computers, digital age, and the like. “You will never make it if you ain’t here, they’ll think you aren’t committed… ” Turns out they were right.

I was committed to my family. My wife and my kids. The time I spent chasing that unreachable dream of mine is time I lost with them. That’s a regret.

You know why there are so few celebrities who are truly happy in their personal lives? It’s because the climb to where they are has taken all of their energy and emotions. (Until the new age now of the show winning instant celebrities….many of whom are soundly resented by the old timers who came up the “hard way” and paid their dues)

I don’t regret anything about where I am, or what I’m doing now. It’s where I want and need to be. Anyways…..after I win that 800 million dollar lottery, I’ll buy my own record company. Count on it.