The 45 Blog

Faith is important. Yet, as strong as my faith is, there was an underlying, low-grade anxiety that flowed like an underground river, between April and June. I couldn’t see it then. The cause of the low-grade anxiety was that I was launching a business without revenues coming in– which can be stressful.

While I remained calm in my personal interactions, my writing during those months provided evidence that I was either distracted, engulfed by soft and unfelt anxiety, or that I was simply angry. An amalgam of feelings were running my show– without my permission.

Now that I have income again, I can write and focus more productively and more effectively than before. During that period, I amassed a good amount of words, even though they were tainted by the underground river that hadn’t a name.

Of course, my wife and daughters were absent for a good period of time during those months, which also caused a struggle. It felt like a version of dying 10x more painful, because I was conscious of their absence– hundreds of miles away from me.

Everybody lines up. Red stanchions are there to keep the crowd orderly. A few trash cans are full of fire for people’s comfort and warmth. Some guys even brought tents , smokeless firepits, and canned chili to warm up and eat under the Tennessee moonlight. Towards the back of the corral, there’s a water station , made of PVC, for dogs and the beggars who come to watch the crowd and make fun of them.

The trick is to start waiting at 5:00 PM, so that when the doors open the next day, you have a shot at being one of the first into the store to get it. However, beware: There are a lot of bad actors– those who’ll elbow you to purchase it first, only to increase its price in the secondary market. We could be talking about an allocated bourbon drop– the kind that happens during the holiday season– when George T Stagg and the rest of the Buffalo Trace Antique Collection enjoy an abbreviated 45-second shelf life at their retail price. Once those kinds of guys walk out, they take pictures of the juice, mark up the price , then sell it to the next darling for a massive profit.

However, that’s not why these guys are here. There’s no bourbon. No new iPhones. Nothing they’d want to scalp. They heard that a valuable, new , allocated question was going to be released. It’s a question crafted by a famous writer or thinker– a single, beautiful question that can change lives, open minds, and produce a music of ideas that is priceless, as long as you receive it before others and keep it under lock and key. That question is your damn superpower. Keep it hidden with your other secrets– no matter how dirty they are.

Just a 45 second clip of a backhoe pulling a tree-stump and a system of roots from the ground. The ground surrounding the trunk is hollow– almost like a crater–, exposing the surface roots and circumference of the stump to the operator. By removing the unnecessary dirt, it’s easier for the operator to observe the target, assess progress and to complete the job.

In this particular clip, the operator commands the shovel to break the stump into smaller parts, then remove each part from the ground. Once one piece is cleared and disposed of in the pile of debris, he removes the next part until the stump has disappeared. Because of how meticulous the operator is, there are no bits of the root left over– therefore the tree won’t grow back. The system is gone.

If this stump removal were to serve as a parable, it reminds me of how one removes problematic root systems from a personal life. Whatever negativity is rooted in a life takes time to remove, planning, and more.

It’s a long process, but an important process. Breaking it into smaller systems and chunks to ease removal makes a lot of sense– and so does the removal of the earth that allows the operator to get a sense of what’s being dug out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about transition and growth. This has been brought upon by my readings in Jung, the Bible and the Odyssey as well as instances of journeys in my own life. . In each of those texts, there are examples of the challenge to change and become something or someone different. Telemachus intends to become a mature man. Abram is challenged by God and becomes Abraham, and Jung’s process of integration that forces us to accept what we hold in the shadow and use attributes from the shadow to become our true selves.

In all instances, there’s reasonable fear as to what may come of the process. If you don’t take the risk, you stay stagnant. There’s need for faith, trust, and courage after making the decision.

And while this is true of character development, it’s also true of idea and knowledge development– especially in schools. Students need to take cognitive risks to build new knowledge and to change their understandings. And yet, we don’t often do this. We allow kids to stay comfortable in the status quo and rarely challenge them with ideas and work that is rigorous and hard.

But the student who comes out on the other side of a difficult task successfully is a new student.

Boiled down, the process is essentially the appearance of a challenge, the acceptance or denial of the challenge, then, if accepted, the working through a challenge. While there’s no guarantee that the challenge will be overcome, there are always lessons to be learned from engaging in the challenge.

But if the challenge is never accepted, nothing is learned.

One good sentence. Just one good sentence to express everything the world needs to express, and to communicate that everything is going to be great.

Is that so much to ask for? Does such a sentence exist?

Is the sentence as simple as one word: Amen? Or is it a four word sentence: Thanks be to God?

Re-reading the Odyssey. So interesting to read as I get trained as a Jungian Coach and while re-reading Genesis. The hero’s journey, as seen with Abram becoming Abraham and Jacob becoming Israel , and Telemachus coming of age and the resistance he feels at his young age to take risks and mature, feels like a cycle.

God has to deposit courage in us to become what he aims for– and you have to stay still to be filled with it, in order to take the leap, to journey.

It’s happening to me now– for the umpteenth time.

For the last four years, I’ve been jamming my fingers into a keyboard to write fiction and failed.

But the poetry always comes out. So do the murals. Might as well do what’s natural.

Formative poems. John Berryman’s Dream Songs and The Ball Poem. I re-read Dream Song 1 multiple times , as well as Number 4 and Number 14.

It’s not just the content and the vulnerability — but the metrics, syntax, and punctuation. The timing and awkwardness in the lines captures so much neurosis, love, and longing in a broken song that , to my ear, is perfect.

Of the different poets I love, there’s a spiritual craving for Berryman’s work. Elliot does this to me, as does Seidel and Creeley some extent.

What I wonder about is what triggers such a strong craving at different times, if there’s a mood that causes me to seek out his work, then put it back for another time.

All I know is once I start re-reading him, and listening to his recordings, he’s hard to stop.

The last few weeks, I’ve been focusing on producing talks instead of writing fiction and screenplays. There’s always a sense of failure with the latter. Does the proverbial tree make a sound if there’s no one there to witness it ? Likewise, is the story really a story of there’s no one there to listen to it or read it?

And yet, that’s what I aspire to do. Guess it’s time to shake off the rust and get busy again.

They aren’t going to edit themselves. And if no one reads them– so be it . It’s the creation that matters.

My youngest has added a new way to start her week. She volunteers on Mondays at a cancer center, helping the patients with their exercises. It’s at 8:00 AM. She walks 20 minutes to get there , then 20 minutes back to campus. She reports the optimism and positive energy that each of the patients exude. Soon she realizes that any test or task she’s been given by a professor is a cake walk– and that complaining is silly.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had that kind of perspective shift to start the week?

1. Branding requires consistency. If a website communicates a certain image, then the product or service must match it. That’s branding. If the actual is less than the image portrayed, it’s advertising.
2. Sometimes the 20th time works. Recording something can be frustrating– but taking a few breaths, meditating, and setting an intention helps– not all the time, but enough.