Amidst Disaster

Okay, so…

Look, I know I’m weird, alright?  I mean, who else writes the last scene of a story before he even has the plot nailed down?  Who else takes a story outline and proceeds to write scenes at random within the defined timeframe?  Who else would abandon a good paying job to be a writer?*

*And now a brewer…

Yeah, I get it.  You wouldn’t let your daughter so much as answer my call, let alone marry me.  I wouldn’t let my daughter marry me, either, to be honest.  I honestly am nothing more than a 12-year-old with a car and a (sorta) job.

Well, that and I happen to have a hell of a lot of experience of life and the world.  Not a lot of 12-year-olds can claim to have got drunk with a president*, or to have slept accidentally in a Spanish brothel, or to have lost (repeatedly) at pool to a renowned physicist, or to have fled from a mother grizzly who decided I was a bad influence on her cubs…

*of the Czech Republic, not the US, but it still works!

I’ve said it before, but the simple truth is that I have been (almost) everywhere, and done (almost) everything.  I’m that Forrest-Gump-type-idiot whose obituary is going to be longer than his list of actual accomplishments.

And do you know what really sticks with me out of all that adventure?  The disasters.  The failures.  The involuntary descent into fight-or-flight.  The moments that not only tell you that you are truly alive, but that also break down the barriers between you and…well…everything.

I’ve mentioned before, but when I travel alone, the first thing I do in a new city is get lost.  I don’t mean ‘can’t find the Michelin-starred restaurant on this block’ lost, I mean ‘what the fuck country am I actually in?’ kind of lost.  That kind of lost has shown me the best and worst of humanity.  Because I (willingly) suffer the disaster of getting lost, I have watched a hooker work a john while her daughter watched from the shadows…

I have stumbled upon the insanity of the stalinist apartment blocks in eastern Europe…

I have found the most perfect field of wildflowers off the coast of Croatia…

I have lit candles to the dead in a private side-chapel in St. Peter’s…

I have drunk shochu with yakuza in a Tokyo suburb…

Hell, I also drank whiskey with IRA “enthusiasts” in a backroom bar just outside of Boston…

I lost my passport in Budapest, and spent the next day dealing with the aftermath of a bomb threat at the US embassy as I tried to get a new one…

My point isn’t what I’ve done, it is what disaster has forced me to do.  Honestly, I can take even the most inoffensive and easy of my travels, and what I truly remember are the times when things went south.  Even something so simple as being too hungover to catch the train I needed led to interactions and events that I never would have experienced in any other situation.

I asked my friend, who fought so long ago at the Battle Off Samar Island, what he remembered about WW2.  It wasn’t the triumphs, and the defeats…it was the unplanned disasters.  “What do you remember about the ship?” I asked.  His answer will always stick with me.  “The smell,” he said, “those were the days before deodorant.”

When you expect, dear writers…

When you plan, and look around all the corners…

When everything is going according to expectations for you, and for your characters…

You’ve lost.  You’ve lost the thread…and the reader’s curiosity.

It is only when everything goes to shit and the random happens that the truly memorable occasions come to pass — both for you, and for your characters.

Look, if your protagonist gets drunk and passes out, you have a minor plot-event to work with.  If your protagonist gets drunk and passes out on the lawn of the archbishop’s palace, you have a whole new level of fun for your writing!*

*Not that I’ve ever done that.  No, not me.  The Polish police promised me that never happened!  Ahem.

It all comes to the question of disaster. As a writer, and as a person, do you cringe and cry from disaster? Do you defy it like some maniacal Ahab wannabe? Or do you laugh right alongside the universe itself while everyone else around you breaks down?

Do you know what got me to thinking about this?  Sailing.

Look, I love to sail.  I love to sail alone…and I love to take others sailing.  Unfortunately, I am a shit-magnet, to put it mildly.  If something is going to go wrong on a boat, it will go wrong when I have others sailing with me.

Now, if I tear a sail, or get becalmed, or run out of beer, when I’m sailing alone, it is no big deal.  Well, the running-out-of-beer thing is big, but the others are small.  But when I have guests on the boat?  Will they remember the adventure and fun of shit going south?  Or will they be all civilized and modern and complain (to others, of course) that “the cruise lines are better”?

Crap, it just hit me: I don’t need to write about celebrating disasters, I just need to get new friends!

{Musical Note — yup, I put this song up before. And, yup, I still love it. And, yup, it works…}

La Dolce Far Niente

My brain is semi-fried.  I spent just too much time over this morning and afternoon working on the concrete realities of trying to build a real-world business to be anything else.  I had a post in mind when my morning started, by the way.  I had it in mind, but it drowned quietly under the flooding waters of marketing plans and partnership agreements and renovation priorities…

*sigh*

Remember that rule of mine?  The one about writing it, right freaking then?  Yeah, I forgot too…

Still, there is enough shit bugging me to get out of the mental cage in which I keep my blog ideas to completely ignore my keyboard today.

1)  Thanks for the, umm, shitty service — Look, I’m a taproom guy.  Can I brew beer?  Yeah, sure I can.  But that isn’t where I shine.  No, where I am an expert is in the taproom itself…and in how we service and please our customers.  Very little, to be honest, pisses me off quite so much as fundamental errors in that service.  So I’m sitting at lunch today — plugging away at those renovation needs I mentioned — with a mostly-full beer and half-eaten poke bowl at my elbow, when my waitress stopped by to ask if I was ready for my check…

Are you kidding me?!  

There are few bar/restaurant sins worse to me than that particular one.  Your job is to get me to spend more money, not push me out the door!  This wasn’t fucking Appleby’s, mind you, it was a one of the better and more popular places in my new town.  It was a place that built its reputation as a good place to hang out, not as a place to offer cheap meals at the price of turning over tables as fast as possible.

She was young, however — and cute *cough, cough* — so rather than just give her a bad tip, I told her just how bad that check question truly was…and how it made me want to leave, rather than buy the additional beer or two I normally would.  I doubt if the words penetrated, but it was worth a try.  The title of this little subsection isn’t ironic, by the way: Had she not pissed me off, I don’t think I would have started thinking about writing a post today…

I still gave her a good tip.

2)  I’m A European Trapped in an American Body — okay, so the subsection above got me to thinking a bit.  It got me to thinking about the things that we Americans do very, very wrong.  Restaurants and bars are pretty near the head of that damned list, by the way.  Oh, I know we Americans are always in a hurry; we Americans always want to eat and run; we always want everything to be efficient and fast…

Fuck that.

I want slow.  I want inefficient.  I want to own that damned table until I decide it is time to leave.  Whether it is a single demitasse of espresso or 57 pints of beer, just bring me what I want and don’t get that damned check anywhere near me until I make that stupid little scribbling motion in the air that all tourists do when they don’t speak the local language!

The French and Italians know their shit when it comes to eating and drinking out, by the way, while the Germans and Czechs* ain’t far behind.  Even the freaking Brits outshine us in this area!  C’mon, America, get your shit together!

*I learned the reality of an old-school, locals-only beer hall in Czechia the hard way, by the way.  Yeah, remember to flip that damned coaster over to the back side when you’re done drinking for the night!  Ahem.

Look, let’s boil it down to brass tacks — if you want a great meal, you don’t go to an American restaurant.  If I had one meal left on this Earth, I would go French.  And, no, I am not talking about some fancy Parisian place with white tablecloths and sauces coming out the ass.  I want a good, village place.  I want a place where the food is grown within sight of the restaurant.  A place where grandpa and grandma cook recipes from their grandparents.  A place where you sit in the sun and drink wine and spend 3 or 4 hours eating a real five-course meal, shared with the folks who prepared it, and who grew it, and who love every second of the life they live.

It is only by the barest hair’s width I say the French won, by the way.  Put me at a table on the Amalfi coast, or in Sicily, or Tuscany and I am just as happy. Hell, I might be a bit happier because I don’t there is anything on this Earth than can compare with a meal within the bosom of a real Italian family…

La dolce far niente* is not just the coolest saying in the world, it is the coolest philosophy in human history!

*”The sweetness of doing nothing.”  I told you it was fucking cool!

{Edit Notes — Holy shit, did I need to proofread this damned thing before I posted it! Ahem…}

{Musical Note — oh, hell yeah…}

Flashfiction: “Who Are You?”

Okay, so the piece I wrote is not the piece I “promised” a couple of hours ago.

Well…

Err…

You see… 

Yeah, another song got in the way.  I’ll append that song to the end of this post, after the flashfiction piece, but suffice it to say that this particular song is one that absolutely demands a story.  Actually, it demands a far longer and more meaningful story than what I have written here, but this is all I have at the present moment.

One thing I will add is that I have several friends who played professional hockey at the highest levels.  My friends…they lived this song when they retired.  While many had family and friends and enough of a life outside of hockey to cope, for others retirement began a descent into booze and drugs and a need to escape.

For some — a few — it began a descent into death.

In what I wrote below, I couldn’t get away from that.  I couldn’t get away from my friends.  I couldn’t get away from those for whom the loss of the spotlight meant the loss of…everything.

This song, then…

This song has power.  You have to listen to it, and I mean really listen.  To the words.  To the emotions.  To the truths.  To the costs that everyone has to face at one time or another.  In the (sad) words of Connor and Oz, “there’s always a price to pay.”

Who Are You?

A screaming crowd in a full arena.  All the cries for more echoing and drowning out the world itself.  All the warmth and affirmation.  All the love.

He remembered it all.  He remembered the goals.  He remembered the cheers.

He remembered when everyone knew his name.

Now, no one knew it.

He remembered, also, that last game.  He remembered the boos.  He remembered the catcalls for more.

The whiskey went down unnoticed.  Just as the pills had gone down unnoticed.

The crowd wanted more.  He tried, as he always had.  He tried to give more.  Tried to be what he once was.

He tried, and he failed.

But still, the crowd wanted more.

He, too, wanted more.

Another handful of pills.  Another swallow of booze.

Everyone wanted more.  Everyone wanted what he could never again be.

Even as the numbness came, he could remember the crowd…

He could remember the cheers, could remember the emotion…

He could remember the autographs, and the cheers…

Just as he could remember the time — just a few hours ago — when the kid had looked at him and asked, “Who are you?”

**Note — I’m using the live version of this song because it has more power than the original album version.  Look, I know it starts slow, but just listen.  Really, just fucking listen.  It’s well worth it.

 

I’m Ruined, By The Way

This was a day that started all wrong.  A day of driving and dealing with crowds and traffic.  A day of frustration and irritation.

At least that’s how it started…

How it ended?

It’s been fucking stunning.

I don’t use that word very often — stunning, not fucking…I use that one all the fuckin’ time — but when I do use it, I mean it.

The greens were lush and vibrant, bright and alive.  The grass and trees absolutely bursting with new growth.  The black rock and soil of the mountainsides rising in stark contrast above the valley floor, capped by the still-white peaks.  A sky as blue as a newborn’s eyes with just a hint of clouds to provide some contrast and context.

If you’re religious — or even if you’re lapsed and fallen, like me — it’s a reminder that the entire world really is a cathedral.  There was a sense of peace and serenity, to go with the feeling of purpose that seemed to permeate the air itself.

It was magic.

Okay, so what the heck does that have to do with the title of this post?

I went into town today.  When you live in a village of a couple of hundred, by the way, going into town is a necessary deal.  Now, instead of going to my preferred town of under 20,000, I went all the way into Bozeman.

Shit, I thought just seconds after getting off the highway, this is as bad as LA!

Okay, I grew up in LA, so I know just how stupid and wrong is that comparison, but it was still what I felt at the time.

Cars everywhere, driving like nutjobs…

People everywhere, crowding and talking and in general irritating the living crap out of me…

Smells and sounds and a feeling I haven’t felt since I left “civilization” behind…

I hated it.  I hated every single second of it.

I cursed and cussed and stressed until I realized I can never go back to that kind of life.

Not to go all hippy-on-a-commune on you, but my days of living in a place like that are pretty definitely over.  I can’t do it anymore.

But even that wasn’t what made me realize I was ruined.  Nope, it was the drive home.

South of Livingston, Montana lies a place called Paradise Valley.

The greens and blacks…

The whites and blues…

The smell of fields freshly mown for hay…

The pace of life determined by…well, by life itself rather than by the artificial urgencies that so characterized my morning.

That is how I realized I was ruined.  How the hell could I ever leave this?  How could I leave the wilderness and the fields?  The bears and the wolves?  The elk and the bison?  It’s all right outside my damned front door.

Sometimes, living in the middle of all this, it can be easy to take it all for granted.  It can all become “commonplace”, and so be overlooked and forgotten.  But then…

But then…

But then, you have a moment of magic.  You have a glimpse of perfection, and you remember just what the hell it is that truly matters.  You can keep the cities and the cars and the crowds, thank you very much, I’ll take a few seconds of perfection — a moment that’s fucking stunning — over all of that.