Rib Joints, Raising Boys, and Reminiscences

On a recent trip to my chiropractor (if you need one, he's excellent), I complained that my neck was especially stiff. I could barely twist it either way without experiencing pain around my shoulder blades. I'm used to stiffness in my shoulders (that's why I get adjusted every week), but this level of discomfort was unusual for me.

"Stand over here and let me take a look," he said, with take a look meaning assess my situation by placing his hands on my shoulders and upper back. "Ah. Hold still for a sec." 

Crunch!

I can't exactly describe what he did, other than to say he wrenched apart my right shoulder and torso in a way that instantly relieved the pain.

"What," I asked, "did you just do?"

"I adjusted your rib joint. When it's out of whack, the nerve gets really pissed off."

"Yeah, it was angry all right. Whatever you did...all the pain is gone."

He smiled. He also let me know that he himself is prone to this particular injury and immediately sees a chiropractor when it happens, because "it's not something you can fix yourself."

A lot of things in life are like that—more than we care to admit.

Leaving his office, the words "rib joint" (even though mine had just gotten unstuck) stuck with me. I remembered the local rib joint, Bobby Q's, where I used to take my boys when they were young and the restaurant was still in Westport. We would go on Tuesday nights, when kids' food was half-price and the magician, Tony, was in residence, moving table to table offering up his same old tricks, and making balloon animals that we'd bring home and save until they eventually deflated. My older son would try to stump him with requests like octopus or armadillo, while my little one was content with the standard fare of cats, dogs, and the occasional monkey.

On one visit Tony was looking a little pale, and he had a contraption around his waist—some sort of miniature air compressor—that he was using to inflate the balloons. He explained that he'd had a case of pneumonia and didn't have his full wind back, but was determined to be able to make his balloon animals for the kids. At the time, my boys and I cracked jokes about what a sad sight he was with his balloon-inflating apparatus, while also commending him for his dedication. Not long after, Bobby Q's closed (to reopen later in a neighboring town)—the first of many icons of my sons' childhood to vanish. There was Gamestop, replaced by a liquor store where we have vowed never to shop. Radio Shack, where knowledgeable salespeople would readily help us solve small technical problems with the right cable or cord. Ace Hardware, whose owner greeted everyone as "boss" and gave each of my boys a tiny keychain flashlight every time we came in. One of the hardest losses was the pub, 323, at the bottom of our hill, our go-to spot for comfort food and conversation. But perhaps the hardest blow for my older son was the Army Navy store, where he used to buy pocketknives and old military gear (supply vests, even a gas mask), and we could spend an hour browsing through their eclectic offerings. Passing these now empty or replaced storefronts always brings a lament, and while the new Bobby Q's serves the same delicious falling-off-the-bone ribs, it will never have the feel of the old one. Despite the good food, eating there is painful, sort of like having a body part out of joint.

Since my visit to the chiropractor, my neck's range of motion has improved dramatically, and aside from some lingering tenderness on my right side (the location of the offending rib joint), I've felt better than ever in my back and shoulders. Some adjustments are needed and welcome. Others we never quite get used to. Even though we know everything changes and nothing lasts forever., the change comes as a shock, a mini-earthquake rattling the otherwise smooth, predictable surface of our daily existence. For a while, we are shaken up. And then we settle into a new pattern, a new routine. As much as the place that is gone, we miss the feeling of the time we spent there, romanticized perhaps in the haze of reminiscence, but recalled fondly as part of our shared experience, our collective family story. The loss becomes bittersweet, because it intensifies the power of our happy memories to bring us joy. And of course, there is always a new story to be lived, remembered, and told. 

Not So Simple Gifts

A long time ago, in a career far, far away, I worked at a now defunct book packaging company in Manhattan called Running Heads, its name an arcane reference to the text—generally book title and chapter title—that runs along the top of each page. Book packagers, for those unfamiliar with the trade, generate ideas for books, subcontract the writing and (if included) photographs and illustrations, then sell the production-ready manuscript, or in some cases, finished books, to a publisher who promotes and markets the title as their own. Credit is given to the packager on the copyright page; if you inspect one of your coffee table books, you will likely find a packager mentioned inside. One of the books that came out during my brief tenure as Senior Editor at Running Heads was Simple Gifts: The Shaker Song, which paired the lyrics of the well-known song (’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free) with spare, elegant photographs of Shaker buildings and furniture. Later, I would create a somewhat similar title, The Dance, for which I hand picked a set of all-American images to accompany the Garth Brooks song of the same name. I even managed to include a wedding picture in it from my first (and at the time only) marriage: a shot of my now ex-wife in her Battenberg lace dress, surrounded by her red-velvet clad bridesmaids (we were married in December), smiling brightly as they fawned over her, set to the line, "I might have chanced it all."

I'm not sure if my name is inside Simple Gifts, but I am sure I did not understand then the nature of gifts, perceiving them as talents bestowed on some and not on others, having grown up hearing what a gifted child I was. I had no idea my gifts were meant for anything other than academic achievement, the furthering of self and advancement in the world. I did sense that my gift for writing held rewards greater than my grades—the joy of creating and the satisfaction of generating original work—but these took a distant second to the ego boost of receiving praise. My gifts were something I was fortunate to have, not something that (as I am now cognizant) carried with them an obligation, a commandment to give. To some degree, this distinction develops naturally as we move from child to adult, but suffering loss—particularly heartbreak—and finding the capacity for mature compassion—are instrumental in redefining our understanding of gifts and giving.

The full lyrics of the Shaker song (included below) celebrate the joy—and relief—of submitting to our gifts and of accepting the ultimate gift of God's grace. When we reach the point of knowing that gifts are not something we simply receive but something divinely given and ordained for good, "true simplicity is gain'd" in the form of clarity, the coming together of mission and purpose. At the same time, we assume the burden and shoulder the delicious weight of putting our gifts to consistent use, of devoting (and yes, I mean in the spiritual sense) ourselves to sharing.

What happens when we ignore the knowledge (which frequently comes in the form of feeling) that we have been given a gift intended for others, when we try, with excuses, to avoid the call? To pretend we didn't hear? When this happens, we squander providence. We forgo opportunities, allow windows to close, let sliding door moments slide by un-seized. And these acts of omission have an impact on the shape of the world, the configuring and reconfiguring of paths and their associated outcomes. When we fail to act, we do nothing less than shift the balance between fate and destiny, both for others and ourselves.

It is said that God's greatest gift to man is free will. "Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall," wrote Milton in Paradise Lost. Yet, this freedom is a complex gift, the gift to come down, as the Shaker song intones, "where we ought to be." It is not the gift to do as we please, but the gift of knowing the difference between right and wrong, light and dark, order and chaos, love and fear. The gift of the words that enable us to make these distinctions. In the Lord's Prayer, we ask that God's will be done, not ours. In the act of asking—an act of our will—we pray that God's will and ours will be one. This melding of our will into God's, this sublimation of our will to His, raises ours to a higher status, just as the sublimation of a solid into a gas turns earth-like material into air or, if you will, sky.

We need not be gifted (intellectually) to understand all this. But we must accept the gift of faith, by which I mean not so much our belief in God but our bond with God, a bond cross-tied by our expectations of God (expressed as our prayers) and His expectations of us (expressed as our unifying our will with His).

I had intended this piece to be more about our solemn responsibility to pass along gifts we are given, but my own will appears to have been sublimated to the words I've ended up expressing. Control is an illusion. The passage of time—measured by day turning to night and back and back again, orchestrated in endless circles of celestial orbits—erases and remakes everything. Death circles life, and rebirth starts the cycle anew. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

Betwixt and Between

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, however, the picture serves to inspire the words (though perhaps not quite a thousand) rather than as a substitute for them. Seeing the leaves of this tree in transition from vivid green to reddish gold, and pondering their pending detachment and descent, turned my thoughts to the seasons of change of which, unlike the four we associate with weather, number only three. I will call them static state, liminal state, and new static state—hardly a sexy set of terms, but sufficient for the purpose they serve.

It's the liminal (or threshold) state that I find most interesting. There's not much to say about the other two. As I looked at the tree, words came to me: "betwixt and between," a dated phrase for being conflicted, unable to choose between two competing or radically opposed options. We all know what between means, but contemplating its companion, betwixt, inspired intense curiosity; like learning someone you've known all your life has an identical twin you've never met. Was betwixt merely between with a twist (or twixt)? I had to see. I've always been fascinated with etymology (the origin of words), and betwixt did not disappoint. What caught my eye in the etymological entry was the phrase "in the space that separates." The word "space" sits in the exact middle of the phrase, literally separating the words on either side and establishing betwixt (and its sibling between) as a space with borders of its own, not just a line. The implication here is that change, no matter how sudden it seems, occurs in stages, that moving from one state to another includes a crossing over into the between space, a space where, for a moment or measure of time, the thing (or person) changing is neither here nor there, neither vivid green nor reddish gold, neither dead nor alive.

When someone cannot process change, such as the intense grief of losing a loved one or the intense shock of severe trauma, we say they are "beside themselves," suggesting they are in a between space—no longer the same person they were but not yet the changed person they are about to be. Trauma survivors often describe the experience of leaving their bodies during trauma, standing to the side or floating above, watching what is happening to them with an odd sense of detachment, because the terrible thing can't be happening to them and must be happening to someone else.

While trauma pushes us into the dark side of the liminal state, the act of creative expression pulls us into the light, a shimmering space where anything is possible, because our imagination has no boundaries or limits. The art we create in this space changes us, often inducing feelings of surprise ("I didn't know I had that in me," or "Where in the hell did that come from?"), familiarity ("I had forgotten that image or experience), gratitude for the muse's visit, or simply wonder. Similarly, our art changes those who encounter it, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Think of how many great people's paths were altered by something they saw, heard, or read. Inspiration is the catalyst that sends us into the liminal space, where we are free to engage, even indulge our imagination and create something original, valuable, transformative. Seeing the tree and associating it with the phrase "betwixt and between" brought me into the space where I could write the words here, releasing creative energy that would have otherwise remained stored in my brain.

I suppose the ultimate liminal space is the shoreline, along with its companion, the horizon. On the beach, where solid land meets liquid sea, the waves are in a constant state of motion, and if you take them in their entirety, neither coming nor going but endlessly lapping, defining and erasing the space that separates, a space that exists as the absence of water as much as the presence of land. The horizon is different, and yet the same. It seems to be a specific, measurable distance away, but that distance grows as fast as we cover it, suspending us in infinite travel, our destination eluding us because it is not a destination, only the space that separates what we can from what we cannot see. The very same space where imagination hovers, vibrating with magic, not an end but a means to an end, not a distant continent we reach and conquer, but a kingdom of air we inhabit through the act of giving chase.

Come find out more about how we’re helping people enter the creative space at Christmas Lake Creative.

Some (Re) Assembly Required

This week I attended the first session of a poetry course in New Haven, taught for alumni by a former professor of mine now in his eighties—a Chaucer scholar with a wicked wit, elvish smile, and shock of (now) white hair set above his still fierce blue eyes. Teaching enlivened him; surrounded by a fresh crop of students, albeit older ones, his cheeks reddened with a youthful glow. As our class discussed the "happy surprises," (the professor's phrase) that we encountered in a sampling of narrative poems (some familiar, some foreign) by Housman, Tennyson, Whitman, and others, I was drawn back to a happy time—college—when my mind was clear, my focus was sharp, and my future filled with promise. I suppose those four years felt that way for many of us, but in my case, life took a turn after graduate school when I began my first marriage, and while my outward appearance gave no sign of the turmoil and (I would later learn) trauma taking place within, my psyche was slowly fragmenting, depriving me of the continuity that comes from keeping your character intact throughout life's journey.

Here is a bitter truth: If you stay long enough in a dysfunctional relationship, you become someone else, changing subtly at first, then later in ways you could never have fathomed, because remaining yourself is too painful. I don't blame my ex for my dismantling. It was my choice—to get married and to stay for 15 years. Still, it hurts to lose parts of yourself that you love, though once they are gone, you manage without them. You accept, then embrace your new normal. A diminished self. It is when ghosts of the former you appear, or rather resurface, that you begin to comprehend the magnitude of the loss, to feel the depth of it in the pit of your soul. I suppose that sounds melodramatic—and hardly constitutes a happy surprise, but the unusual experience of re-encountering an aspect of the person you once were is one that bears exploring. Imagine an appendage or limb, gone numb long ago, now starting to tingle, as you exclaim—both outraged and elated—"I had forgotten what it was like to have feeling there!" On an intellectual level, it's a twisted version of schadenfreude; you find misery in your own pleasure, lamenting the loss of sensation even as you celebrate its return. Then there follows a frustrated determination to get back what was taken from you, to exercise the atrophied muscles, or (to mix a metaphor), to blow on the spark, fan the nascent flame, and never again allow the fire to be extinguished. 

Re-entering the world of poetry, and re-engaging in pure intellectual pursuit, reminded me of the person—the scholar and the gentleman—I used to be. In the days that followed, what began as a quest for a paper I had written for my old professor (still searching) turned into a tour of my old Yale notebooks and papers and an attempt to reassemble my bright college years by putting everything in order. Notebooks neatly labeled for each class and filled with clear, coherent writing spurred feelings of sadness while sparking resolve to resurrect my organizational habits and skills. Papers that required intense concentration and clarity of thought to write inspired me to start clearing mental clutter and take time each day for the life of the mind. I took heart in meeting my old self again and felt shame at how, over years of laziness, complacency, and inactivity, I had chosen easy over challenging and abandoned the high standards in which I once took pride. And then there were the letters—folders full of correspondence with friends—that took me back to a time when I spent time deepening relationships, exchanging thoughts and feelings instead of text messages, and crafting carefully considered responses instead of accepting gmail's insipid suggestions. Before this morphs into a complaint about modern technology, I should state that I appreciate the many new ways we are able to connect. But I also miss the intensity of written letters, the absorption that accompanied both writing and reading them, and the joy of receiving something personal in the mail.

I haven't yet found all the notebooks, and some—as is the case with many of the books I studied—were likely lost over decades of moving. But the self-reassembly project is underway. I may not be half the man I used to be (though I'd like to claim at least 49 percent), but I can, with effort, become a better man than I am now. I can hold myself to a higher standard of professionalism, perfectionism (the good kind), performance, and pursuit. As Oscar Goldman intones in the introduction to "The Six Million Dollar Man" (which my father took the time to watch with me when the show launched in the early 70s), "We can rebuild him....better than he was before..."

And here is the happy surprise I encountered on a walk at the beach with my son today—happy and completely unexpected—but in light of my renewed commitment to excellence, not completely surprising.

Why I Teach Writing

I teach writing as a business. But unlike Michael Corleone in The Godfather, my business is strictly personal. And unlike Michael's father, Don Corleone—who did business with Hyman Roth but never trusted him—my business is based on mutual trust between teacher and student.

Creativity, in its purest form, is personal expression—art that flows from the place deep inside where your essence resides, the crucible where your unique characteristics, experiences, and perspectives cohere to form your view of the world and the voice you use to share it. While we all know how to assemble words to form sentences and paragraphs, most of us are uncomfortable tapping into our personal creative source. If you're a writer-in-waiting, you've probably justified your waiting with at least one and perhaps several of these rationalizations:

• I have nothing to say.

• No one cares what I think.

• I don't have any interesting stories to tell.

• My secrets are too shameful to share.

• I don't like being vulnerable.

• I'm not a good writer.

These excuses, or self-deceptions, have the power to hold you back, but only if you give them that power, only if you cede your voice to the voice inside your head repeating these lies, the voice Steven Pressfield calls "the resistance."

The core of my teaching is not the elements of craft (though these are important, and I do cover them). It is enabling you—yes, you, the one hesitating right now—to silence the false voice filling you with doubt and listen to the true one that will free you to create from your heart. Creativity honors the personal, and that's why trust is so critical. You not only have to trust your true voice but also trust that you are writing in a safe environment where your voice will be heard and respected, your courage will be applauded, and your creative effort never criticized and always celebrated. This does not mean you won't receive suggestions on how to improve. My job as a teacher is to help you grow and become a better writer. But you will never feel that anything you've written is not good enough—only not as good as what you're capable of achieving.

The pleasure of unlocking your creative self, of freeing it from the fear-shackles that keep it captive in the prison of silence, is immensely enjoyable and intensely fulfilling. You may have experienced this feeling—perhaps during a childhood performance, a moment of clarity when you spoke your mind, or any time you felt safe enough to be open, honest, vulnerable, and real. It felt scary, but it felt good—the trembling anticipation, the jolt of electricity when you began, the thrill of revealing yourself, and the cathartic relief of finishing. I teach because I want you to be able to feel this joy on a regular basis, to find your thrill, and to delight in freeing the beauty that lives inside you and sharing it with the world. "Me, share my what?" you might reflexively say. But come on, you know it's in there...

So ultimately, I teach writing to empower people. Not just because it feels good to be empowered. But because we need more empowered people, more empowered artists in the world. We need more artists unafraid to speak the deeper truths not found in any compendium of facts, trite advice column, or well-researched article on Wikipedia but discovered where beauty lives, in the clear stream of consciousness that flows through your spirit, the fertile soil that nourishes your individuality, and the bright fire of imagination that burns in your dreams.

Come write with me!

We're All Gonna Die!

Summer camp can be scary. Away from home for the first time, kids are treated to terrifying ghost stories; encounter counselors who say things like, "If you touch me while I sleep, I'll kill you—it's a reflex action, part of my Marines training"; get wicked wedgies from boys bigger than they are (one little guy actually had the back of his briefs hung over the tennis net post); and try not lose digits or limbs while learning how to wield an axe. At least, those were some of the scarier things about my summer camp up in the North Woods, which in spite of them, was a wonderful place to spend eight weeks dodging mosquitoes, eating mystery meat, swimming in an ice cold, leech-infested lake, and—the best part—heading out on canoe trips that took us into nearly pristine nature far away from civilization. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a million-acre wilderness preserve in northern Minnesota (bordering Canada) is one of the most beautiful, still unspoiled parts of the world. Younger campers (swampers, loggers, and axemen) took sawbills—six-day canoe trips—and sometimes stacked them back-to-back to spend a dozen days paddling and portaging, sunning and skinny-dipping, cooking spaghetti carbonara over campfires, and dragging around the hulking Duluth packs that contained all the supplies. The highlight of becoming a lumberjack (your rank during your final year of camp), was Big Trip—a 12-day sawbill that, when completed, was commemorated with a plaque in the dining hall that displayed the name of the trip (agreed on by the campers) and a list of its participants.

I share all this to provide the backdrop for a most memorable sawbill taken during, I believe, the first year I attended camp (age 12). Most of the trip was uneventful, but on one of the portages (for those of you not conversant with canoeing, a portage is a stretch of land separating two proximate lakes, measured in rods, over which you carry your canoes and packs), a contingent of campers (myself included) got cut off from the counselors when we took what turned out to be a wrong turn on the trail. As it dawned on us that we were lost in the woods, one of the campers panicked.

"Omigod, Omigod," he bawled. "We're lost! We're lost! We're all gonna die!"

As he sob-screamed his lament, I took stock of the situation.

"Michael," I said to him, "Calm down."

"WE'RE...ALL...GONNA...DIE!" he blabbered, releasing a rush of shallow breaths between each word.

"Michael..."

"Y-y-y-yeah?"

"We're not going to die." Finally, I had his attention.

"We're not?"

"No. First of all, we have the map, which the counselors need for the rest of the trip." One of the other campers displayed it, safe in the clear plastic pouch hanging from his neck. "And second, we have the food." Another camper pointed his thumb at the heavy green canvas sack on his back. "So," I said, "the counselors are going to find us."

And soon enough, they did.

I have told this story to many people, including my kids, offering it as an example of how clear, rational thinking is the best way to counteract panic.

Michael fell into a state of fear not because there were no options to ensure our survival, but because he didn't know what to do. Feeling powerless, he flailed about and allowed his anxiety to block his brain from assessing the situation. It never occurred to him that simply waiting for the counselors to find us was the safest course of action with the greatest chance of success.

I'm not patting myself on the back for being the one to figure it out. I've panicked plenty of times in my life over things major and minor, stressing out needlessly when a clear head and calm demeanor would have served me better. I'm offering this tale as a reminder to myself and an example from which we can all learn how to be more effective under pressure. Because the thing is, young Michael was right. We are all going to die—eventually. So if we can learn to take life's inevitable surprises in stride, we can live better—and enjoy life more—in the time we have here.

Originally published on tomaplomb