Wednesday, November 22, 2006

What She Said


I'll tell you what she said. She said, "If you're really drunk, how come you don't make a pass at me when I turn off the flashlight?"

I was seventeen then, and it was the first time I had tasted beer, but I wasn't drunk.

She said, "Do you remember where you left your sleeping bag?"


Those are the opening lines of a short story called "What She Said" in the Beloit Fiction Journal. The Spring 2006 edition. It just arrived.

The story is mine.

I like seeing it in print. Holding it in my hands. It's been a long time coming.

I say that not because the spring edition arrived in November, but because I wrote the first version of the story, then called "Good Thing Going," back in 1977, when I was fresh out of college.

I hit upon the new title and a new emphasis sometime around 1990. It felt like a breakthrough, and I sent the story to about a dozen magazines in quick succession.

No one wanted it. Not even the city magazine I worked for at the time. My boss wanted to run it but her boss didn't, and that was that.

I gave up. For a dozen years, I did nothing with the story.

Little did I know, all that time, that I was one more submission (and two or three changes) from success.

A small success, I suppose, but a sweet one just the same.

Saturday, November 18, 2006

Getting Stronger

Hatred seems so strong sometimes. Overpowering. Unstoppable.

I'm convinced, however, that its power is often overestimated.

People learn to hate when they have been hurt. They're like wounded animals  vulnerable and afraid. They lash out quickly because they know they are weak and may not be able to fight for long.

Love sometimes seems weak. It doesn't have the sudden destructive power that hate displays.

But love can heal. And given time, it will.

Friday, November 10, 2006

Shedding Tears

My wife and I have been married 30 years now, and the last time we checked, our auras were almost identical. And yet we’re very different. Her goal is to cry less; mine is to cry more.

Tears come to her easily and often. Sad movies. Sad songs. Parting from relatives we may not see again for a year or more. Random acts of kindness. All these things bring tears to her eyes.

Me? When I was a boy I cried a lot. Now, hardly ever.

Breathe in, breathe out.

A woman I know said she would choose joy over enlightenment. I can respect that. We know what joy is and it’s pretty cool. Enlightenment is more mysterious.

Beyond emotions?

I don’t think that’s it. I’ve been beyond emotions (or pretty close to it).

The great thing about my wife is that she feels things. Deeply. I know sometimes she wishes she didn’t. But I love her for it. Everyone does. For her, it’s frustrating to have the words she wants to say get stuck in her throat. She’d like to have more self-control than that. But I think tears say more than words sometimes.

Still, no one wants to be a slave to their emotions.

As a young boy I cried over things like striking out in baseball. The ball was small and hard and I was afraid of it. Afraid of failing, too. When it was my turn at bat I would just stand there. Finally a classmate said, “Just take a swing. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Good advice.

Breathe in, breathe out.

I learned not to cry for silly selfish reasons. In fact I learned not to cry at all. Almost.

A few years ago I cried uncontrollably when I thought I was going to lose my job. As it turned out I kept my job while others lost theirs. Then I began to think of them as the lucky ones ...

The most enlightened people I know are not beyond emotions. They feel joy and sadness, but are not controlled by them.

By not crying I appeared to be in control of my emotions, but I was not free. I was controlled by them in a different way.

I cried, for the first time in a long time, during an initial energy checkup at the Dahn Yoga center in our neighborhood. My aura changed dramatically. I don’t really remember what the headmaster did or what all we talked about, but I came out feeling a lot of compassion. For others and, surprisingly, for myself.

Since then I’ve learned that a new friend at the center carries in his wallet a picture of himself as a young boy.

“It reminds me that I need to take care of little Louis,” he says.

At times, Louis explains, he has denied himself things he wouldn’t keep from his worst enemy.

When I finish writing this I’m going to find a picture of little Freddy (my nickname as a boy).

Breathe in, breathe out.

Lately I’ve allowed myself to cry more. I cry listening to Sting sing “Fields of Gold” and watching the romantic comedy “Love Actually.” I cry rubbing my wife’s hand in yoga class.

“While you are crying, watch yourself,” the headmaster tells me. “Ask yourself why you cry.”

Good advice.

“When we purify our emotions we can cry less,” she says. “When we have a deeper soul's connection we will cry more.”

Monday, November 6, 2006

For a Friend

I see you. You're smiling. Sandy is with you. She's smiling, too. You feel so good you're dancing, dancing like you never danced before. You feel free, the way you did before you learned to wonder what others think.

Your pockets are full of cash, and there's plenty more where that came from. Money comes easily to you now. Money is like a pretty woman who finds you irresistible. Like Sandy.

I see you throw your head back and laugh out loud.

Your mistakes are in the past, and the past doesn't exist. There's only now. And now your heart is full of love and forgiveness. For yourself. For everyone you've ever known.

I see it. I see you. You know it's true.

Thursday, November 2, 2006

The Fire This Time

My first thought, after 9/11, was that America should turn the other cheek and refuse to be pulled into an endless cycle of violence.

But when we bombed Afghanistan and sent Osma bin Ladin running for the hills, I admit that I felt a sort of primal satisfaction. I even allowed myself to be convinced (by Tony Blair and Colin Powell) that invading Iraq was a necessary evil.

Now I feel like a fool.

I'm reminded that, as the Messiah, Jesus was expected to be a great military leader who would drive the Romans out of Palestine. But he rejected that role and allowed himself to be killed, even though, if you believe the Gospels, he had the power to summon an army of angels.

It's hard to imagine a more thorough repudiation of war than that.

Was Jesus a fool?

Whatever you think of him, this much is true: In the long run, he brought the Romans to their knees.

Wednesday, November 1, 2006

When Peace Explodes

I've decided I need to assemble a bomb.

Not me alone. I have to have help. Co-conspirators. You.

The parts and players we need will have to come from Detroit and D.C., London and Berlin, Beirut and Jerusalem. All around the world.

As I write this the sky is dark and quiet.

Can you feel it?

There's a charge inside of us.

We're the bomb.

We're the shock and awe.

And everything will change when peace explodes.