The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for July 2011

Listen Twice As Much As You Talk

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Twenty-six years ago I sat on a hillside overlooking Jerusalem and listened to a man chant about the destruction of Jerusalem. It was Tisha B’Av and while my friends and I listened to him chant from Eicha I made a silent promise to myself that when I returned to the states it wouldn’t be for long. I felt as if destiny was calling out to me and all I had to do was answer.

Twenty-six years later I find myself in a very different position than the one that the sixteen year-old boy I once was expected me to be in.

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It is not really a surprise to me to write those words because as a 42 year-old father I have the benefit of having lived and loved a little bit more than that boy. That boy wandered the streets of Jerusalem with his friends and swam in the Mediterranean with his first real girlfriend. He saw things and experienced pieces of a life that he wanted to live. That boy wasn’t sure how he would make it happen but he never doubted that one day he would live that life. Part of the benefit of being sixteen was that he wasn’t burdened by realistic expectations or concerns about things that could hold him back.

Life was there for him to live- provided that he was willing to go take it.

It feels a bit funny to write about myself like that but it is hard to put myself back in those shoes. It is not that I don’t remember because in many ways I do. There are pictures and letters that help to shore up the memories that lie between my ears and a thousand stories that have been told a million times. But so much has happened it is hard to really remember what I wanted beyond a few serious things and the superficial.

That 16 year-old would have been offended by this. He would have asked how I could forget being evacuated from a forest fire the day before we left the states and then talked about how the airline lost our luggage. He would have told that story about the six hour layover at Degaulle and the cab drivers who didn’t speak English. And even though he hated the Yankees he would have talked about meeting George Steinbrenner at JFK.

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And then I would have told him that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason- listen twice as much as you talk.

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The best part of moving is the way you discover lost treasures. Last week I found a six page essay that I wrote my freshman year of college. It was for English 101 and was titled “Why I Write.” My professor gave me an ‘A’ and left a comment on it that said that she thought that it was the best thing that I had written all year long.

I read it and remembered the 18 year-old who wrote it. Pieces of it sounded eerily similar to my life as it is now. It was a bit disconcerting to read those words and feel that sense of disappointment that maybe I haven’t done what I set out to do. I thought about it for a while and tried to figure out if I really thought that I had fallen short or if maybe destiny had come calling upon my door again.

There was a part of me that kind of liked the idea that maybe the carousel had finally completed the circle and it was time for me to try getting off of it again. It sounded a lot better than the idea that I had been taking a nap when opportunity knocked.  Or I thought that alternatively it might have been a case of me having to learn some sort of lesson before I could move on.

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I can’t say whether it was any of those things or none of them and it doesn’t really matter. What matters to me is how I feel about my life now and the future that lies before me. There is much to say about that but since I am writing this late Sunday night I think that I’ll save those thoughts for later.

5 Favorites

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The Ties That Bind

Confession time: It makes me crazy when people ask me to list a specific number of “favorites.” It doesn’t matter whether it is books, movies, music or foods the constraints of being limited to listing a set number of items rubs me the wrong way. So you might wonder why I used a headline like 5 Favorites instead of something that didn’t use the limits I hate. Well, read this post on improving readability and you will see that Marianne makes some excellent points about how numbers are visually pleasing to people.

Since I want you to participate in this it made sense to me to try to pull you in. Just to be clear, I still think that headlines are overrated. BTW, I reserve the right to list more than 5 or less than 5 entries as the case may be.

5 Favorite Movies

  1. Casablanca
  2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  3. Star Wars
  4. Unforgiven
  5. On The Waterfront

5 Favorite Musical Artists/Bands

  1. Ray Charles
  2. Johnny Cash
  3. Bruce Springsteen
  4. U2
  5. The Beatles

5 Favorite Authors

  1. Mark Twain
  2. J.R.R. Tolkien
  3. George R.R. Martin
  4. Nelson Demille
  5. Stephen Donaldson

Now it is your turn. Who do you like to read/watch/listen to?

Do You Still Beat Your Wife

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The original headline to this post was going to be something like “Gini D Broke The Blogosphere. It was tied into a post that she wrote that turned into a stunning example of why people need to read carefully and think before they speak. I think that I found Gini, Lisa and Spin Sucks around January or so of this year. It has quickly become one of my favorite haunts on the net and I was grateful for the opportunity to guest post for them.  One of these days I’ll give it a more thorough endorsement than that, but for now suffice it to say that I read it daily.

Anyhoo, the reason I mentioned that stunning example of the need to read carefully is because some of the commenters did a superb job of proving that they are in need of the reminder. I know, it is not nice for me to call them morons, buffoons or idiots who suffer from illusions of grandeur. But I am not here to be nice and I do so love being able to address them as mutton heads who argue without logic or reason.

Fact is that some of them remind me of the people who try to win debates by making comments like, “do you still beat your wife.” If the goal is to try and anger someone so that they cannot argue effectively this might be one way of doing so, but it is not necessarily something that I would recommend. Nor would I deny using that very technique upon occasion. Call me a hypocrite and I’ll ask if child protective services ruled for or against you.

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Last night my pal G and his wife came over and hung out for a bit. We met each other on the first day of kindergarten and have been friends ever since. It was good to see the old man and I appreciated having the opportunity for the kids to see him and his wife. The kids don’t remember that G met them both at the hospital the day that they were born or that he used to be at their birthday parties. If he hadn’t moved over to the right side of the country he’d still be hanging out with us, but the old bastard done hitched up his wagon and moved.

It was good to see him for a host of reasons not the least of which is how happy he is. Not that he wasn’t before, but he and his wife are a great match and it is good to see how comfortable they are together. And it was good to show the kids that old friendships don’t have to die because people move either. Hell, it couldn’t be easier to stay in touch now. When we were kids it was pen and paper- long distance telephone calls cost far too much.

Thirty-seven years later and here we are. Told him last night that since it is summer we ought to grab our bikes and go ride somewhere. Way back during the dawn of time that is what we did. We’d meet at his house or mine, grab our bikes and just go. If we had enough pocket change we’d grab a slurpee at 7-11 and maybe a comic book and then go hit the bike path to find adventure.

It is a little bit different than the lives my kids live now. They get shuttled and chauffeured around more than we did. They don’t get in trouble for showing up after dark or being late for dinner the way we did because life is different now and society suffers from an overactive imagination and a bad case of fear.

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I really enjoy Spotify and Google +. I am short on time so I won’t give you the full review of either but for now I’ll say that they are great. Google+ has been especially good and I am really enjoying the hangouts. If you are on Spotify here is a playlist I threw together when I was just messing around.

The picture below is my Twitter avatar. It is from a spot in the Los Padres National Forest. I have been roaming around there for close to 30 years now- it is simply beautiful. Been meaning to scan some more photos in. For now you have the shot below or alternatively click here and gain some insight into places I consider to be among my favorite refuges.

padre

A Tool Is Only As Valuable As Its User

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I looked in the mirror today and didn’t like the face that I saw looking back at me. He looks haggard, worn and weathered. The light in his eyes looked a little bit dimmer than normal and the hairline was a mess. “This is why you have broad shoulders. It is time to man up and get it done,” I said.

And then I watched as my reflection recited those very same words right back at me. For a moment I could hear the echoes ricocheting off of the walls inside the large empty space between my ears. I am over extended and my stress level is at DefCon 3. There are too many things going on right now and I can’t afford to do a half-assed job on any of them. But life doesn’t ask you if you have the resources you need to complete your tasks. I suppose that I could make some analogy about conveyor belts or put a link to that factory scene in I Love Lucy but you get my point.

When I walked out of the bathroom I headed straight to the microwave to grab a bowl of oatmeal that I had heated up and then bowl in hand waltzed over to my laptop. In between bites of food I made two business calls, checked my email and reviewed my calendar. These items are part of my mobile productivity tool kit. They are part of my system to manage my time and make myself more efficient.

At least they are supposed to make me more efficient. They are supposed to help me increase my productivity by providing more flexibility so that I can work wherever and whenever. Lately they feel less like useful tools and more like shackles and fetters that bind and restrict my movement.

The Right Tool For The Job

When I was about seven my parents decided to remodel our house. They hired a general contractor to do the work but it wasn’t uncommon for my father to come home from work, eat dinner and then go work on the addition. One of the many reasons I remember it so vividly was because of the hammer he used or should I say that it was the one that I wanted to use. I would have done so without question but it was too heavy for me to use it properly. I couldn’t hold it in one hand and swing it.

It used to make me crazy to see dad use it so easily. He didn’t need two hands. He didn’t worry about smashing his fingers. He just picked it up and made it sing for him. For that matter he did that with most tools.  Most of the time he included me on these repairs/maintenance jobs around the house and if we weren’t short on time he would let me help him with the work. Except for that hammer. I didn’t get to use the hammer because he said that I couldn’t use it properly. He was right. At that time I simply wasn’t strong enough to use it the way it was designed to be used.

As a father I have been trying hard to pass those same lessons onto my children. There are some important life lessons in those moments, not to mention moments of Deja Vu. Every now and then I have to tell the kids that they can watch but not help. I don’t like doing that, but time constraints make it hard. And every time that happens I have flashbacks to working with my dad.

Reality Check

I don’t wear a watch anymore. I can’t tell you the exact date that I stopped but it must be close to ten years or more since I did it. I stopped because I was tired of the tyranny of time. I didn’t like the pressure it brought along with it so I got rid of it. It might sound silly to say that, especially in light of the clock on my ever present cellphone, but it was a relief not to wear it.

But some of that relief has been chewed up by that mobile productivity kit. Some of that relief vanished when I gained the ability to become more productive and instead found myself working seven days a week. The rules of the blog dictate brutal honesty so I have share that I do that because I can’t afford not to. This fabulous economy is kicking my ass and I am doing what I can to give it as good as it gives me. But I don’t have to like it.

I don’t have to like what I see in the mirror or the feeling that this electronic yoke around my neck is always tugging on me. I don’t have to like any of it but I don’t have the right to complain unless I am willing to fix it. So that is what I am trying to do- fix it. That is why I remind myself that it is worth learning how to use tools more effectively. That is why I try to set aside some time to figure out if they have more functionality than I am using and whether it will be useful for me.

That hammer I am swinging might not the right tool for this job. I can beat the machine the same way that John Henry did but without the same consequence he suffered. All I need to do is find the right tool for the job.

 

It Made Me Cry

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Confession time. Last night I watched part of an Animal Planet show about dogs and started crying. It was unexpected and I was shocked at the feelings it brought out. It happened during the segment on Golden Retrievers. I saw a couple of puppies playing and suddenly I remembered running with the Big Lug and I just felt this giant, gaping hole. He was a mutant Golden, much bigger than the average. Had a massive head and weighed far more but was more loving than a thousand of them.

Maybe it is because we are moving and I remember watching him patrol the house. Maybe it is because he liked to pretend that at more than 100 pounds he could be a lapdog or because my kids rode him like a horse. It shocked me because I don’t cry easily or much at all. I don’t really know.

But I can tell you that last night he visited me in my dreams. We were both young. I was a twenty something year old kid at the park and he was about two. And in that dream we did what we can’t do together any more. We ran. He was always just ahead of me, but never so far that he was out of sight. He was headed towards traffic and I was yelling for him to stop, fearful that he would do something stupid and get hit by a car.

And then a few dogs started barking at me and he was at my side, tail pointed, deep bark warning them to stay away. At the same time I yelled at them too- told him not to worry that I would find a way out of it for us. But mostly I was secure in the knowledge that the big lug had my back because he always did. Who listened better to my stories than he did. He never got tired or them or acted judgmental- he just loved me.
I have been thinking about something Danny wrote and the words I wrote there.

Brevity and I are often at odds so I will try to sum things up as best I can. My last blog post would be similar to this.

“I have lived, loved and laughed more than I have cried and complained. I have friends that I would die for and who die for me.
I am grateful for those who have walked with me on my journey and hope that they have learned from me as I have learned from them.
There will never be enough time for me to see all that I want to see, do all that I want to do and say all that I want to say.

So these few words shall have to suffice. It has been fun.”

I am proud of those words. They have meaning and significance to me. I am proud of them because I do wrestle with brevity and I feel like I captured the essence of the sort of life I want to lead.  But I am unsettled. Been thinking about those words and wondering if I am living up to the things I shared there.

The answer is that I don’t feel like I am holding up my end of the bargain. I feel like most of it is true but I spend too much time complaining. Too much time bitching and moaning about the things that make me unhappy.  Those who know me best will tell you that I am very hard on myself and that I am being unfair about some of this. Some of the challenges are things outside of my control. They tell me that force of will isn’t enough to change things and that beating myself up isn’t going to make it better. They tell me that I need to let some of that go and just wait for things to pass.

Well that is fine and good but it is not my nature. I am filled with fire that is never extinguished. I don’t just let go of the important things….not easily. It happens but I need to work through it all and eventually a stubborn fool like me comes around. But I need time.

Maybe that is why the Big Lug is on my mind. Maybe he came to visit because he knows things. Maybe he came to remind me that though I may not be that twenty something year old kid anymore I still have all of the potential and opportunity to fulfill that he did. Maybe he came to visit because some promises reach beyond.

There is far more that could be said and will be said but it won’t happen here. Some things aren’t meant for all eyes and ears. Suffice it to say that I am thinking of Orpheus in the underworld and the mistakes that he made. When you find yourself wandering through Moriah you don’t go knocking on strange doors. You keep your eyes open and your head down.

Time for that North Star to show up again. But until that happens I’ll keep walking and remember that the Big Lug still walks with me.