The Acorn

On the last day of your senior year in high school you broke a rule by wearing shorts. The Principal called you out for the infraction, stopping you in the hallway. The details of your exchange are lost in time but you most certainly had been disrespectful. Whatever the case, he ended up banning you from the graduation ceremony. A harsh blow, but hardly the first one the school had dealt you during your tenure. Thankfully, it would be the last. Good riddance. Your mother was upset by the news. Maybe she cried. Maybe she took your side. You don’t remember. It was a long time ago. However, you do recall your father’s reaction. “Good,” he had said. “Now I don’t have to go.” You were relieved that he hadn’t gotten mad. But was it also possible that you’d been hurt by his indifference to your banishment (and by proxy his). After all, had you not been banned from the ceremony your father would have been forced to attend. At the time you viewed it as a win: neither of you sitting in the hot sun waiting for a piece of paper. But shouldn’t a father want to go to his son’s graduation?

The acorn does not fall far from the tree. Having three children, you too are put off by the myriad events you were made to attend. Parent-teacher conferences. Recitals. Soccer matches. Graduations. You were ambivalent about going to any and all of them. Sarah hated this about you. “Why must you only think of yourself?” She asked a million times. As time wore on, she would become even more direct: “You’re going, whether you like it or not.”

And go you did. Sometimes grumbling, rarely happy about it, always happy when it was over. You have wondered about this attitude. Many times. It’s not that you didn’t want your children doing these things you just didn’t want to do it with them. It was nerve wracking watching Remy hammering away at the piano or Callie being bested on the soccer field. Worse was enduring the other children. That was the opposite of entertaining. What did Oscar Wilde once say? Hell is other people’s children. They bored you to annoyance.

But you went. Dutifully. You have Sarah to thank for this.

After joining AA, you learned to name your character defects and that your principal sin was one of self-centeredness. Early on, you recall a member’s lamentation about drinking in his car while his daughter played the cello. How low can one go? He asked the group. Join the club you wanted to say. It went without saying.

Your upbringing demanded that you become self-sufficient. Your difficult surroundings forced you ever deeper into your head, where you created fantasies to offset the growing fears and frustrations of the outside world. You became introverted and built your life around it – it being you. Reading, writing, collecting butterflies, drawing comics, even masturbating; by the time you started using drugs and drinking the die had been cast. You put yourself first because in your mind no one else ever would. You had ample evidence to support this view. Your parents abandoned you. Friends betrayed you. Girls were beyond you.

You have covered this territory before: in therapy, in AA, in your writing, in your head, ad nausea. Even during your darkest hours, you knew better. That’s why you intervened on yourself, joined AA. What you hadn’t counted on was “better” meaning selfless. You desired to be a better husband and father but you couldn’t let go of your will. Despite everything, you admired your wits and what they had wrought. In AA, you heard people attack such pretenses over and over but… There was always but. Needless to say, untangling yourself from your self has proven to be tricky. A lot more tricky.

Even so, there is much to celebrate. You are not so angry anymore. You are responsible, law-abiding, and paid your taxes. You do not feel cheated by the world or anyone in it. Though you know the world is unfair you also realize that this is why you are still alive and not a drunken statistic. If life were fair you’d be dead. You are grateful for what you have. You are sober.

Every day you do something physical, something spiritual and something for your brain. You have your set of unwise and unhealthy behaviors but it soothes you. It could be worse.

But the calm always seems conspicuous. Can you maintain it? Will another front arrive? The questions buzz like mosquitos, disturbing the peace. What now?

A Chorus of Sirens

Everyone, you think, is some kind of addict. Be they active, recovering, or on the brink. Passions which are good become obsessions which are bad. People are self-seeking. This is the human condition, the result of Original Sin. Yearning. Craving. Lusting. Demanding. Wanting. Needing. Soothing. The seeds of addiction are there, have always been there. Many are able to temper these urges, denying the seeds what they need to flourish. But they’re still there. Waiting for a deluge, a perfect storm of misery or even joy… or just another shitty day. Then boom! Out comes the Hagen Das. The lonely housewife turns on the TV and never turns it off. An old man retreats to the garage for a smoke. Some concede to only a few addictions. Maybe they are harmless ones – a gardening obsession, collecting figurines. Or weird: like hoarding. Hidden from the world. In others the seeds erupt as soon as they touch a nerve, like weeds in a vacant lot. Out of control. You’ve met no one who has not succumbed to something. Drugs and alcohol are the poster children for addiction. But plenty else is out there.

Most of the jobs people do are motivated by addiction. The salesman would like nothing more than for everyone to be addicted to his wares. Many are called dealers. They give out samples. The chef wants you to crave his cooking, the barista her coffee. And so on. If one deconstructs any vocation creating and/or satisfying needs and wants were at its core. Your job in particular was culpable. In more than a poetic sense advertising worked every one of the seven deadly sins. The theme for your advertising blog: We make you want what you don’t need. Indeed. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a litany of demands that must be met.

You suppose teaching is not inherently linked to a type of addiction. Considered noble and selfless, teaching gets a pass. Undoubtedly, there are other clean human activities. But you are not trying to win an argument; you are merely making an observation. As an addict of many things you are wont to rationalize your behavior. This theory of yours is likely an example.

It’s late. You sit outside smoking your Swisher, a cheap “cigarillo” that dope smokers also use to lace their weed. On this night, as on most nights, you hear the coyotes wailing from the adjacent hills and valleys. They sound hungry or horny. Wanting something badly. Like a chorus of sirens. In Chicago, you would lie in bed at night listening to the police cars and ambulances, wondering where the fire was, if anyone was dead or dying. At the time you did not realize how much they sounded like coyotes. A thousand miles due south, where California ends and Mexico begins coyotes are what they call the nefarious men who smuggle illegals across the border, often using the same hidden paths and dried arroyos that the drug smugglers use. Illicit desires. Unsavory dealers. Whether it’s for a better life or merely a bag of heroin, there is unmistakable craving shot through all of it.

Original Sin 2.0: Instant gratification.

You’re boxed in behind a slow driver. Cars speed by you on either side, making it difficult to pass. You bang your hands on the steering wheel, cussing. You flash your high beams. Honk. The driver in front of you continues as he was, probably listening to a favorite song on the radio, or maybe chatting with one of his children on speakerphone. In that moment he is an unfit driver, quickly morphing into your nemesis and all that is wrong with the world. Finally, you see an opening and tear by him, raising your middle finger. Fucking idiot! It all happens in the span of a minute. If only you could see yourself. Raving.

Fortunately, this is not you, not today anyway but rather a passage in Daily Reflections, a small book in the lexicon of recovery literature. The chapter’s title: Levitation.

Being able to view yourself from above, in a moment, in general. This is what the reading means by levitation. Seeing what is really happening versus the way it feels – perspective over pandemonium. With it, maybe one doesn’t go off at every provocation. Maybe nobody does.

Is the lack of patience human nature, besetting the entire species? No other creature stops crawling to get up and walk. Then to drive, fly and eventually break the sound barrier. Tom Cruise in Top Gun: “I feel the need… the need for speed.” Original Sin begot this defect, upon Adam and Eve’s rebellion in Eden. They could not wait. With each passing generation the concept of gratification has grown, and now the right now is all that matters. Instant gratification has zoomed past the virtue of patience like the driver from the story, adding a vulgar gesture.

The vast majority of technology and innovation is defined by speeds and feeds, not creating something new but making which already exists even faster. From primitive fire to unseen microwaves, from handwritten letters to messaging Apps, the world keeps shifting into higher gears. You want your fast food faster. Forget drive-through, there’s an App for that. And the human race races forward. You just read on the Internet (not in a magazine or newspaper) that Starkist tuna is suffering profound financial losses because today’s consumers are unwilling to use a can opener. Suddenly this tool, a mainstay in every kitchen on earth, is now obsolete. It makes sense a turn crank no longer has value but the wider implications are scary. If one of your daughters is hungry and discovers a can of tuna in the pantry, she will be clueless how to acquire its contents. She will look at it as she would a novel. No way I’m opening that. Why bother?

This is not a diatribe on the ignorance of new generations. Your children are not stupid. Rather they are lazy and impatient, as much as any addict, and you cannot blame them. Indeed, you haven’t opened a can of tuna in years. You too prefer a quicker solution for your hunger. No surprise the once iconic can of tuna is dead in the water.

Selling God a devilish way to get freelance. And that’s the point.

Creator for hire…

That’s right, to prove my chops as elegant persuader I’m going to sell you on the idea that God exists using intuitive and rational arguments. No new age mumbo-jumbo. No beatific platitudes. No doctrine. I won’t apply one single faith-based point in my brief. When I’m done you may still not believe in a higher power but you may well be closer to Him (and hopefully me) than you were before.

First a proposition: If anyone can definitively prove God does or does not exist I will give him all that’s left in my bank account. Non-believers and agnostics crave proof of God’s existence and, of course, it never comes. But why is it we rarely flip the question and demand proof that some Higher Power doesn’t exist? It’s just as impossible.

Let’s go totally left-brain and talk percentages. Applying common sense, one must conclude there is at least a 50% chance that God does exist. However, that also means there is a 50% chance that God does not. “God is everything or nothing.” It’s 50/50. If you had those odds on the lottery –or anything really- you’d take that bet. You’d be a fool not to.

Yet, so many of us are ambivalent about God or even the idea of God. Why is that? Because we can’t see him? Well, you can’t see gravity either. “That’s different,” the unbeliever claims. You can prove gravity. There are equations.

Do you believe in love? For your children? For your wife? Of course you do. But one cannot prove that love definitively exists. You feel love or you don’t depending on your circumstances but you can never see “love.” So, if one can believe in love then why not God? They are both faith-based concepts with no rational foundation. Why is one different from the other?

Do you covet money, prestige or status? Are you addicted to drugs or alcohol? Have you ever been? What about chocolate or coffee? Or your boyfriend? We often make higher powers out of people, places and things. The alcoholic knows this all to well. When she wakes it’s all she can think of. The addict’s drug of choice brings him to his knees every night. They will put spirits ahead of everything else, including jobs, loved ones and personal health. Even the sanctity of human life will not deter the devoted from blindly worshiping their drug of choice. In 12 step recovery it is suggested that the addict replace one higher power for another. When he or she is able to do so the results are demonstrable, even astounding. A freaking miracle.

I’m a cynic and a realist. But I’ve come to believe, even know, God is as likely to exist as not. Such circumstantial evidence may not hold up in court (which ironically trusts in God) but public opinion is all that matters here. Persuasion is an art that uses facts, not the other way around. Have I moved you even five percent closer to believing in a higher power? Or in me?

So, how about that freelance? Let’s do some creation together: https://steffanwork.wordpress.com/

Just call me ‘One Finger.’ It’s clear to me now, I’ll never type like a normal human being.

Jabbing at the keyboard like a monkey…

I’ve written three novels, dozens of short stories, probably thousands of ads, as well as maintained this and other blogs, and I composed all of that content with basically one finger: the index on my right hand.

Weird right? Most professional writers know how to type. Well, one finger has been my normal since I started using machines to compose text.

In high school and then college, I wrote on a typewriter given to me by my father. Back then I drank and smoked (what serious writer didn’t?) and I used my left hand for that and my right to work. Needless to say, I did a lot of both. It all became second nature, especially the booze.

As time went by I stopped drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes but I never learned to properly type. That’s not to say I didn’t evolve; I did. Like every writer, I memorized the keyboard. Subsequently, my finger tapping became faster and faster. I never timed it but when I’m in the zone I can probably hammer out forty or fifty words a minute, maybe more.

I use my cell phone keyboard the same way.

This will never change. I’ve gotten too competent in my dysfunctional approach to bother learning another method.

Oddly, I don’t know a single person who types like I do. All of you seem to engage your keyboards properly. Even you non-professional writers. Am I wrong about this? If so, let me know. I’m curious: Am I the only one-fingered typist who is not a child or a monkey?