Tag Archives: life

Step Back In

Posted on April 11, 2016 | 1 comment

I doubt many tune into my blog to read a cool poem and reflect on its deep meaning, but just in case anyone else in this station wagon has ever messed up, reflected on an irretrievable life, and decided that the opportunity to carry on is too precious to stay away, this Raymond Carver poem is worth it.

Locking Yourself Out,
Then Trying to Get Back In

By Raymond Carver

You simply go out and shut the door
without thinking. And when you look back
at what you’ve done
it’s too late. If this sounds
like the story of a life, okay.

It was raining. The neighbors who had
a key were away. I tried and tried
the lower windows. Stared
inside the sofa, plants, the table
and chairs, the stereo set-up.
My coffee cup and ashtrays waited for me
on the glass-topped table, and my heart
went out to them. I said, Hello, friends,
or something like that. After all,
this wasn’t so bad.
Worse things had happened. This
was even a little funny. I found the ladder.
Took that and leaned it against the house.
Then climbed in the rain to the deck,
swung myself over the railing
and tried the door. Which was locked,
of course. But I looked in just the same
at my desk, some papers, and my chair.
This was the window on the other side
of the desk where I’d raise my eyes
and stare out when I sat at that desk.
This is not like downstairs, I thought.
This is something else.

And it was something to look in like that, unseen,
from the deck. To be there, inside, and not be there.
I don’t even think I can talk about it.
I brought my face close to the glass
and imagined myself inside,
sitting at the desk. Looking up
from my work now and again.
Thinking about some other place
and some other time.
The people I had loved then.

I stood there for a minute in the rain.
Considering myself to be the luckiest of men.
Even though a wave of grief passed through me.
Even though I felt violently ashamed
of the injury I’d done back then.
I bashed that beautiful window.
And stepped back in.

“Locking Yourself Out, Then Trying to Get Back In,” by Raymond Carver, from Where Water Comes Together With Other Water (Vintage Books).

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Now or Later

Posted on April 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

[Note: After reading a recent post, my friend, Brittany, suggested that I watch “The Barkley Marathons” on Netflix.  I did, and wow!  For the Netflix aficionados among us, it is a good use of ninety minutes.  I’ll just leave this as a teaser for anyone interested.]

In “The Barkley Marathons” (Netflix, see note above), a graduate student named John shared that he was taught as a child to work hard, save, and plan for the future.  John was a good son who bought what his folks were selling.  However, his father, practicing what he preached, worked and saved throughout his adult life so that he and his wife could travel the world on retirement only to die one year before retirement.  This effected a change in John who decided that you should live life while you have it.

I’m with John.  I’m not signing up for The Barkley Marathons anytime soon, but I’m with John.

Now to be clear, I’m not advocating that anyone quit work, buy a sports car, and go all Thelma and Louise on the world.  Instead, I suggest that we spend some quality time determining what it means to really, truly live, and do that now instead of later.  Later does not come with a guarantee.

Is it possible that “living life while you have it” could look like hard work and saving to travel the world when you retire?  I think so.  If that’s what you discover.  I simply (and humbly) suggest that you make sure of it before placing all of the proverbial eggs in such a basket.

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Dawn

Posted on March 28, 2016 | 2 comments

I rise at dawn, lace up my running shoes, and step out into the cool pre-morning air.  There is no sign that anyone in the world is awake, other than the faint chirping of the early birds whom I presume are getting the worms.  For a moment, I feel privileged.

The sky is a bold shade of ambiguity.  It is neither dark night nor bright day, and if forced to decide I would declare it silver, although it is a bluish-grayish silver like the color of the Dallas Cowboys britches that I never have been able to properly identify.  The conservative moon shines brightly overhead to testify that night remains, but there is an unmistakable sense that night is transforming into a new day.  You can see the anticipation in the air.

On days like this, the day simply arrives without fanfare.  I like it that way.  The glorious sunrise is such a showoff, demanding adjectives like “glorious” and bursting on to the sky like Justin Bieber enters a party.  Sure, everyone wants to see a sunrise, but there is something comforting about the typical, understated way most days just seem to happen.  For those of us who struggle to keep it together, it is nice to know that you might just wake up and discover a new day.

I salute the dawn, nature’s way of saying that life and light are on the way.

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Life-Changing Moments

Posted on March 7, 2016 | 3 comments

I often say that I do my best work by accident, which is true, and there is no better example than the afternoon I as a young high school basketball coach said hello to the most adorable six-year-old little girl. We were standing in the gym, she in an after-school program and I awaiting the bus to take the team to a road game, and unaware of the massive implications for my life initiated the following conversation:

“What’s your name?”

“Erica.”

“What grade are you in?”

“First grade.”

“Oh, do you know my nephew, Josh?”

“Yes!”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Yes”

“Who is your boyfriend?”

(Without pause) “Aaron Farley.”

Note: This was particularly interesting since Aaron was one of my junior high basketball players.

My life was forever changed. Erica and I soon became buddies. She brought me Christmas candy. I met her mother. In less than five months, I married her mother. A couple of decades later, I am the luckiest man on the planet and owe it all to that innocent conversation with a cute little girl in a smelly high school gymnasium.

Erica is a beautiful woman now who teaches/loves adorable little children as a career, and even though birthdays have come and gone (and another of hers will come and go tomorrow), to me she will always be that adorable little girl who changed my life for good.

Be careful out there today. It is entirely possible that an innocent conversation can change your life for good, too.
Erica 1

 

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It Will Be Alright

Posted on February 22, 2016 | 9 comments

SCENE 1: It was August 2012 and the worst moment of my life. My mother was dying more rapidly than I and my sisters imagined, and I had spent the last hour holding her hand while she dozed in a special lift chair. The clock taunted me like an executioner. I knew that I had to fly back to California and leave her for the final time, and eventually, that time arrived. I went to grab my bag, but when I returned to say goodbye it was obvious that this would not go well. I stepped into another room to gain composure but failed, so I simply collapsed in loud tears into her shallow, yellowed chest, and through my sobs could hear her raspy, comforting, motherly voice whisper, “It’s going to be alright.” It sure didn’t seem so. When I stood to leave, I strode quickly out the door knowing that I would never leave if I looked back. A man should never have to turn his back on his dying mother, but I did.

SCENE 2: Three weeks later, I am on an afternoon flight from Los Angeles to Memphis. That night, through the miracle of air travel, I would sleep in the bed my mother died in that morning, two thousand miles from where my fateful day began. I reviewed the eulogy fortunately written the day before and fought off tears on what otherwise appeared to be a normal flight. Troubled and weary, I put away the notes and plugged in earbuds in a futile attempt at distraction and scrolled through the flight’s music offerings. For some reason, I selected Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and soon heard his hopeful, comforting, spiritual voice say, “Don’t worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright.” The tears flowed easily now, and if anyone noticed, I didn’t give a fill-in-the-blank.

SCENE 3: It is February 2016 in Malibu, California, and I am driving down the Pacific Coast Highway for a lunch appointment with a good friend. It is sunny, blue skies, seventy degrees, and heavenly. Lunch will be served by the Pacific Ocean with surfers bobbing in the waves. It has been a bit of a rough month personally, physically, and professionally, but I am recently feeling better on all fronts. Per usual, my Legend CD by Bob Marley & the Wailers is playing, and my old friend is reassuring me once again that every little thing is gonna be alright. Mom was right. Of course. She always seemed to be.

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This Is Life

Posted on January 29, 2016 | 2 comments

Flipping through television channels is one of my least favorite things to do, but that is what I was doing Sunday evening when I discovered CNN’s “This is Life with Lisa Ling,” a series that describes itself by saying that Ling “goes on a gritty, breathtaking journey to the far corners of America.” The episode I watched was more grisly than gritty as she journeyed to the L.A. County Coroner’s office (like “This is Death with Lisa Ling”).

The show was creepily captivating—and a little personal since I learned that everyone who dies in L.A. County outside of being in a hospital under physician’s care is taken to the warehouse that Ling toured for the world to see. I live in L.A. County.

I also learned that approximately eleven thousand dead bodies are processed in same warehouse each year, which if you do the math, is a lot. The crazy number is at least understandable since L.A. County is the most populous county in the nation (ten million people!), which is like Arkansas plus Mississippi plus Oklahoma (or, for easy math, the nation of Sweden). But still. That thirty dead people on average show up there every day is just difficult to imagine.

Ling introduced viewers to several employees filling several roles at the Coroner’s, and in so doing, basically walked us through the entire process. In particular, we followed the path of the unidentified dead, from the search for family members to the eventual cremation of those whose families cannot be found.

I mean, it was a fun show. Sort of a new Addams Family!

No, it was heartbreaking. Until, that is…

At the end of the hour, Ling shared that the Coroner’s office periodically hosts a multi-faith service in Evergreen Cemetery to honor the unidentified, which sadly numbered over a thousand at the one featured on our television screen. That part was still heartbreaking. The heart-mending part for me was the point Ling made that although these souls died alone, their ashes are honored in community.

That part—the honoring of all people in community—fits the name of Ling’s show. That is what life is all about if you ask me. Now, if we can just work backward and honor the lonely while they are still alive, we will have arrived at someplace worthwhile.

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Let’s Play Two!

Posted on July 6, 2015 | Leave a comment

“The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.” – Richard Rohr, “Falling Upward”

“It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame… Let’s play two!” – Ernie Banks

[Note: If all goes as planned, I will be making memories on an exciting family vacation when this publishes on Monday, so pardon my lack of originality today. I wrote the following seven years ago just before we moved to California, and I probably enjoyed writing it as much as I have ever enjoyed writing anything. It is humbling to realize how much I could add to it from these past seven years, but today I simply offer it to you as it was written in August 2008.]

I am 37 years old, and according to the oddsmakers in Vegas, about halfway through the typical life of an American male. At this age, people like me tend to compose lists titled, 100 Things To Do Before I Die. I know I did. But all this got me to thinking . . .

I’ve watched the sun rise and set on the Gulf of Mexico and gazed with wonder across the expanse of the Great Lakes, and both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I have hiked to the top of a mountain and gone spelunking beneath the surface of the earth. I have witnessed up close the majesty of Niagara Falls, the grace of a school of dolphins at play, and the power of a mighty hurricane. I have collected seashells on a beach, picked fruit in a citrus grove, gone fishing in the deep blue sea, ridden a horse that didn’t like me AT ALL, and slept under the stars. I have planted a tree and watched it grow.

I have fully loved just one woman, witnessed the birth of a child, and felt heart flutters taking a child to kindergarten, seeing a daughter graduate high school, and then leaving her at college. I have stood up for friends at their weddings, counseled them through messy divorces, and carried caskets of others to the cemetery. I have eulogized my own dad and officiated a wedding for a couple dressed up like Superman’s parents. True story. I have bought houses and cars and then lost everything and been homeless. I have moved far away from home.

I have been on a star’s tour bus and had backstage passes for concerts. I have listened to the blues in Memphis and jazz in New Orleans. I have dressed up for the theater and stood under a blazing sun with the Parrotheads at a Jimmy Buffett concert.

I have built Habitat for Humanity houses and organizations, worked in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving Day, and made regular friends in a nursing home. I have been a court appointed special advocate for children and spent three years living in a children’s home. I have been a Special Olympics coach. I have donated my blood.

I have seen LeBron James dunk a basketball, Landon Donovan kick a soccer ball, Maria Sharapova serve a tennis ball, Emmitt Smith run a football, and Johnny Bench catch a baseball. I have been in the Superdome for Carmelo Anthony’s Final Four and for LSU’s BCS National Championship Game. I watched juiced-up Barry Bonds play in old-school Wrigley Field. I have worn the colors of the opposing team at an SEC football game, and I’ve seen a top-ranked team upset on their home field – both on the same day. I have attended Monday Night Football, Spring Training, and all levels of minor league baseball. I have seen Bear Bryant worshiped in Tuscaloosa on a Saturday afternoon.

I have flipped burgers, and I have interviewed for a CEO position. I have graduated from college, and I have taught high school. I have totally changed careers – more than once. I have opened a business. I have preached the gospel.

I have read War & Peace, and I have written books of my own. I have read the Bible. I have blogged. I have been interviewed on television, radio, and the stage of a mega-church. I have published letters to the editor.

I have been where both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were assassinated and where everyone died at the Alamo. I have stood where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America and been speechless to see Dr. King’s church right next door. I have walked both Beale Street and Bourbon Street. I have dined with Shamu and been “in” Abraham Lincoln’s tomb. I have watched a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral, the Blue Angels fly over Pensacola Beach, and ridden to the top of the Gateway Arch.

I heard Bill Clinton speak as President and Jimmy Carter reflect as a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I had my picture made with Pamela Anderson in Malibu, and John Grisham once called ME on the telephone.

I have ridden roller coasters and, like an idiot, once risked my life climbing a water tower illegally. I have been a first responder to a horrible automobile accident. I have taken impromptu trips, and I once took a roundtrip flight from New Orleans to Miami in a single day.

I have utilized my right to vote. I have been an official member of a political party and campaigned for candidates, and I have been a member of a labor union and lobbied lawmakers.

I have won high school state championships. I have coached t-ball. I once ran a 15k, and on one miraculous day broke a hundred in a round of golf. I have been the hero in a game. I have met a childhood sports hero, and I have a handwritten letter from a baseball Hall of Famer written on Hall of Fame stationery.

I have been to DisneyWorld in Florida, and I have seen the Hollywood Sign in California. I have walked on a glass floor 1800 feet above the ground in Toronto, and I have snorkeled in Cozumel. I have toured CNN in Atlanta, the Art Institute in Chicago, the Space Center in Houston, and the Mall of America in Minneapolis. I once tracked down the lake where they filmed the opening scene from The Andy Griffith Show.

And that’s not all. I have had my name officially engraved on a sidewalk, paid a street artist in the French Quarter, grown a beard, shaved my head, built a deck, and been on a diet. I baptized my dad, my daughters, and a good friend in a freezing lake one cold January night.

Best I can figure, I’ve already had a good 100 things in my life. Maybe more. From here on out is just gravy. So since I haven’t died yet, and if no one minds, I think I’ll just go ahead and shoot for two.

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One More Day to Discover

Posted on June 26, 2015 | Leave a comment

Today, I share my favorite poem of all time, “At Least” by Raymond Carver. It is a poem filled with life, thankfulness, and anticipation.

At Least – by Raymond Carver
I want to get up early one more morning,
before sunrise. Before the birds, even.
I want to throw cold water on my face
and be at my work table
when the sky lightens and smoke
begins to rise from the chimneys
of the other houses.
I want to see the waves break
on this rocky beach, not just hear them
break as I did all night in my sleep.
I want to see again the ships
that pass through the Straits from every
seafaring country in the world –
old, dirty freighters just barely moving along,
and the swift new cargo vessels
painted every color under the sun
that cut the water as they pass.
I want to keep an eye out for them.
And for the little boat that plies
the water between the ships
and the pilot station near the lighthouse.
I want to see them take a man off the ship
and put another up on board.
I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy – I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what’s going to happen.

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