Paradise Lost [Archive]

[originally published September 11, 2012]

The first 3/4 of 2001 were among the best days of my life.  I was part of the Walt Disney Pictures/ABC Television Screenwriting Fellowship, which meant that the entire year was devoted to writing.  No "day job," no "freelance" chores to make extra money, nothing like that.  I was, for one idyllic year, a writer full time and nothing else. But 2001 was also the year of The Seattle Mariners' record-breaking 116-win season.  Although they were unable to parlay this historic event into a World Series (they were choked off in the play-offs when the mighty Yankees "flipped" the proverbial "switch"), for six perfect months, the M's were playing some of the best baseball in the country, giving fans of the team and the sport in general plenty to cheer about.

Let me flashback a bit to show you where I came in:  In late March of that year, just prior to opening day, my wife and I decided to take a day trip from our tiny rental in Hermosa Beach to Edison Field in Anaheim, home of the Anaheim Angels and just down the street from Disneyland, to purchase game tickets for when the Mariners came to town.  Our original intention was to see one or two games, maybe a three-game series, but when we got to the ticket booth of the stadium, we looked at the schedule and saw that the M's would be coming to town three different times for a total of nine games.  On a whim, we purchased tickets to all nine games--April 13th through the 15th, June 29th through the July 1st, and September 10the through the 12th (foreshadowing--cue the music).  

We also bought tickets to the Mariners series with the Dodgers, a game at San Diego, a game in Oakland, and a mid-summer series vs. the Angels in Safeco Field up in Seattle.  That made 17 games in all we saw that year, and to cap it all off, on October 5, 2001, when we were up in the Seattle-Tacoma area visiting family, we purchased tickets from a scalper on King Street just off Occidental Avenue, and saw the Mariners notch win #115 in Safeco on the same night that Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire's home run record.  

Of those 18 games we attended, we witnessed only six losses as the Mariners lived a steady string of high-fives en route to a historic regular season.  The Mariners were so special that year that legendary Tacoma-based guitar group The Ventures composed a song about them.  As a baseball fan and a Mariners fan, it was hard not to feel good all of that summer.  

It was a little peice of Baseball Paradise.

There were so many highlights from that season, but let me direct you to one play in particular, this dramatic game-ending catch in left field by Charles W. Gipson Jr.  A photograph of that play appears below.  I have told this story a number of times in other blogs, but I realize there may be people who have not heard it, so allow me to share it again:

On that night at Edison Field, the Mariners earned their 104th win behind the strong pitching of Freddy Garcia, who in 2001 was quite simply amazing on the mound.  Freddy pitched 8 scoreless innings, giving up just 3 hits and no walks, to get his 16th decision as a starter.  Going into the bottom of the 9th with the M's up 5-0, manager Lou Piniella called Arthur Rhodes from the bullpen to close the game out.  Rhodes gave up three hits and one earned run, and catcher Dan Wilson committed an error.  The Angels had two men on base, now trailing only 5-1, with two outs, and Tim "Big Fish" Salmon stepping up to the plate.  Salmon was a strong hitter capable of putting the ball out of the park, and although Rhodes had been a serviceable set-up pitcher all year, he had blown his share of leads.  One errant pitch, and Salmon could make this a one-run game, and the fans knew it.

My wife and I were sitting along the first-base side, back about 20 seats or so, almost in front of Ichiro Suzuki.  We were decked out in Mariners gear and biting our nails.  The Angels fans around us were on their feet, clapping and screaming to rattle Arthur Rhodes (this was a year before they discovered those obnoxious "Thunder Sticks").  As a Mariners fan, it was one of the more tense moments I had felt at a ball park.

And here is something important to note.  If you glanced out at wall in right field, the one with the scoreboard for all the other major league games, you would notice something interesting, something that didn't occur to me until much later.  Every other baseball game being played that day had a great big F next to it.  All the the other MLB games were finals--they were in the books.  This lone game between the Mariners and the Angels there on the West Coast was the last baseball being played anywhere in America that night.  

According to the Baseball Almanac, the game lasted 3 hours and 8 minutes.  According to my ticket stub, first pitch was at 7:10 p.m. PDT, so the moment pictured above occurred at roughly 10:18 that night, 1:18 a.m. on the East Coast.  That meant that when Tim Salmon popped an Arthur Rhodes fastball into left field for what looked like a sure hit, and when Charles Gibson Jr. ran that ball down, dived, caught it in mid-air, rolled head over heels on the grass, but came up holding the ball high to end the game (pictured above), it was the very final play of baseball on September 10, 2001 ... which on the East Coast was already September 11th.

Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini once wrote of his fascination with still imagery, how it contains only a moment but denies the viewer all moments that came before and after it.  The last century of history is filled with just such images--the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square on V-J Day, or the nude Vietnamese girl running down the road near Trang Bang after a napalm attack on her village.  But no one has really stopped to contemplate this photo.

In this photo, we see the very last play of Major League Baseball in America before the country lost its complacency.  This was the last game played where the seventh inning stretch was accompanied by the crowd singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."  A week later, after a moratorium on all American sports, the seventh inning stretch would resume with "God Bless America."  When Gibson made this catch, the thought of a terrorist attack on American soil seemed impossible, even though it was less than 10 hours away.  When Gibson made this catch, baseball was just a pleasant diversion, not what it would become--symbol of Americana, vehicle for a New York mayor to seek out photo ops, and great unifier of a people.

Before this catch, baseball was just a sport.  After this catch, baseball as a sport was the equivalent of the 1980 US hockey team's victory over Russia or the 1995 South African rugby team's victory over New Zealand.  

Or at least that's the way we wanted to think of it.

When I first blogged about this years ago, I still romanticized this catch, romanticized the moment when our beloved M's nabbed win #104 and were that much closer to making history.  On the night of September 10, 2001, it was just a catch, but in hindsight the following morning, I wanted to go back to that moment and just hold it frozen--my wife and me in the stands at a baseball game, barely a care in the world, feeling as safe as can be.  

After that catch, things changed ... and then they didn't change.  For a week, maybe two, maybe three, there was a sense of civility everywhere I went, perhaps most strongly symbolized by members of Congress from both parties singing "God Bless America" on the steps of the Capital.  In the World Series in October, Republican and Democrat alike cheered when President George W. Bush walked into Yankee Stadium and threw out the first pitch in Game 3.

For a brief time, we did not argue about the petty things, about whether or not moving the war from Afghanistan to Iraq was justified, about whether or not interrogation techniques were necessary for national security or a barbaric practice that made us no better than our enemies.  Had we "gotten" Bin Laden back then, we would not have cared who got the credit.  Back then, a shared trauma pulled us together, and then once the grieving process was over, we were back to the business of hating each other as usual.

Today you will see a lot of images of the Twin Towers with smoke pouring out of their blackened, flaming orifices.  I'd like you to look instead at the photo above, at a moment in baseball.  It was the last moment in baseball before everything changed.  

Good night, and God Bless America.

Tales of My Father [Archive]

[originally published on September 9, 2012]

In the 1980s, when I fully surrendered myself to the drink, my relationship with my father suffered.  Ever the good man, Dad never left my corner, and he was always there to pull me out of a long concatenation of furnaces that I repeatedly cast myself into.  Nevertheless, there was always tension between us.  I was a great disappointment to Dad, I knew, and there reached a point where he could not trust me with even the smallest of tasks.  And I, fully aware of this disappointment yet secretly holding Dad in the highest regard, managed to bury the shame wrought of this contradictory circumstance by nurturing my alcoholism and irresponsibility to the fullest extent.

When I finally got sober in 1994, my father and I set out to mend our wounds.  There was no efficient way to do this.  It took time and an openness we had not previously shared.  Much of this healing took place while watching baseball, a sport I had previously loathed.  Prior to sobriety, I had found baseball to be a stultifying experience, the equivalent of watching people read.  But something magical happened when the drink was removed and the scales slowly began to fall from my eyes.  I share some of that magic in the video below.

Another snapshot of this story is important to share.  In 2006, while living in Florida, my wife and I rented the movie Click, starring Adam Sandler.  In the film, Sandler plays Michael Newman, a harried workaholic disengaged from his family, who is given a magical TV remote that allows him to jump around through time and to different points in his life.  But this is one of those "smart" remotes that remembers trends and repeats them, and soon Michael is skipping over huge chapters of his life, missing some of the most important moments.

One of these moments that Michael skips over is the death of his father.  Horrified by this, he asks the remote to take him to the last time he saw his father alive.  Michael immediately jumps back in time and is a spectator, watching himself as the bitter CEO of his own company, too occupied with matters of business to take a moment to go to lunch with his father Ted (played by Henry Winlker).  The last shot we see of Michael and his Dad together is of Michael at his desk, working away on reports, while Ted slips out of his office, shoulders slumped and a heartbroken look on his face.

I immediately vowed to get home more and spend more time with my Dad.

Today, at the hospital, Dad was a bit bleary, having difficulty staying awake, and he was obstinate when we tried to get him to do his physical therapy exercises.  When he began to ignore us, Mom decided that we needed to leave (we had been there awhile anyway).  When we told Dad goodbye, he had that same look of abject despair that Henry Winkler as Ted has in Click.

I don't know if my father will ever come back to us.  He is not the Dad I know right now, still struggling with delirium and so frustrated by his disorientation that he lashes out at all of us.  But as long as he is still taking breaths, he is still my Dad, and as such, I felt compelled to honor him in the following way:

In 2010, when my wife was out of town, I decided to take a road trip by myself up to Dyersville, Iowa, to see the farm and ball diamond that served as the shooting location for Field of Dreams, my favorite film (you can probably guess why).   On the drive, I made a few special stops to videotape myself ruminating about my life, my father, and baseball.  After editing in some narrative and including several images from the film, I presented The Field, my 30-minute finished documentary, to Dad on Father's Day 2010.  

I warn you, this video is rather frank, and I take pains to be as honest as I can about the nature of my own past transgressions.  I hope you take time to watch The Field, and if you do, I hope you get something out of it.  If you do not watch, I will understand.  Many who have seen the entire documentary have told me it was quite an emotional experience.  That was my intent, I guess; no artist sets out to create something that will be ineffective.   

Mortal Dreads and Powerlessness [Archive]

[originally published on September 5, 2012] 

It may come as a surprise to you, but I was a very nervous child.  I lived in constant dread that each day would be my last, a fear largely spurred on by the apocalyptic nut-jobs whose end-of-the-world delusions were gaining ground in light of current events at the time.  Some cases in point:

In December 1973, as Comet Kohoutek was about to attain perihelion, a religious whacko named David Berg was given too much media space when he announced that Jesus had come to his home to warn him that Kohoutek would destroy the earth on Christmas Day.  Because this story was in the newspaper and on TV, I assumed that it was real news, which meant that it had to be true.  As such, I did not sleep all night on Christmas Eve, listening not for Santa's reindeer on our roof but for the thunderous boom of global destruction.

In March of 1975, a local church sponsored a TV broadcast of A Thief In the Night, a terrifying low-budget thriller about the Rapture and subsequent tribulation.  The story follows a free-spirit non-Christian named Patty who is left behind after Jesus raptures his followers, including her husband, into heaven.  The rest of the film follows Patty as she flees from a global fascist government called UNITE, overseen by The Beast, or anti-Christ.  The film could have easily been dismissed as a dime store potboiler had not the round-faced minister whose church had sponsored the film come on-screen afterwards to assure us that, yes, these horrors were "very real" and would "soon come to pass!"  Not even sleeping with the light on helped me through that one.

In the summer of 1979, I was at church camp when I had a really unsettling conversation with a camp counselor who had read Hal Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth.  According to this sadist, I would not graduate from high school in 1981 as I had hoped because that was the year the Rapture was going to occur.  According to Hal Lindsay, Jesus had said that the generation that “witnessed the budding of the fig tree” would be the generation to see the Lord’s return.  The budding of the fig tree was the birth of the nation Israel, which happened in 1948.  According to the Bible, a generation of judgment is 40 years, but within that time, Jesus will come back and call up his church, leaving the rest of mankind in Tribulation for another seven years.  So, 1948 plus 40 equals 1988.  But subtract the seven-year Tribulation, and what do you have?  1981.  I didn't get much sleep at church camp that summer.

I know it sounds pathetic that I grew up in a constant state of panic, but the end of the world was everywhere, and if it wasn’t being touted by religious fanatics, it was being advanced as an inevitable outcome of the Cold War, with films like Threads and The Day After (filmed in Kansas) offering us a terrifying vision of life after nuclear holocaust.  When I was a kid, I lay awake in bed praying.  In the late 1970s, after my older brothers had moved out of the house, I would stay up until all hours of the night in the loft bedroom we three had once shared.  Over and over I pleaded with God, almost tearfully, "Please don't destroy the world!  Surely you've got other ideas?"  

I used to be terrified of other things too, that something bad would happen to my parents or my brothers.  I used to have nightmares about one or both of my parents dying.  Once I had a bad dream about a girl I had a crush on in junior high poisoning my brother Doug, and I had to watch Doug writhing on the floor choking.  I had a recurring nightmare about standing in the driveway of our house with my Dad and watching the streams of nuclear missiles being launched from the silo north of El Dorado.  When I got to high school, that dream shifted to the parking lot of the newly opened Wal-Mart, and instead of Dad standing next to me, it would be my high school buddy Paul.  

I finally got over these fears, of course.  It took a while, but I did.  Many of the fears washed away in the 1980s when I began drinking.  That decade was a weird time for the party crowd anyway.  In hindsight, I wonder if others of my generation didn’t grow up with the same mortal dreads.  Maybe those others, like me, came to terms with said fears in their mid-20s by drinking life to the lees.  I think that's where my mind was in the 1980s.  Those years were lived in the shadow of nuclear holocaust, and drinking was the only thing that made sense to me at the time.  After all, if any day could be my last, why not spend that day in full party mode?  I even had a special mix tape I would play on my Sony Walkman should the nuclear warning sirens ever blare.

After the drinking, of course, the 1990s brought sobriety.  It was here that I got in touch with Spirit and learned to meditate.  By that time, the Cold War had ended, and all of the ETAs for the Christian Apocalypse had come and gone.  I was cool with it either way, more or less, and I lived life one day at a time, trying to be grateful for all that I had.  I learned how to live with acceptance and without expectation, and I think I found some modicum of peace.  This has been the state of mine I've striven for since I took my last drink, and every day it gets a little better.  

Imagine, then, my disorientation this morning when I woke up at 3:00 a.m. with a panic attack.  A panic attack!  Me!  I never have panic attacks.  I'm one of the least panicky people I know, so where the hell is this coming from?

Well, a lot of things have contributed.  As the Democratic National Convention is going on right now, hot on the heels of the Republican National Convention last week, a lot scary predictions are flying around the Internet.  These predictions have little to do with how I should vote and more to do with the inevitability of a financial apocalypse regardless of who's in office.  Some of the blogs online are the stuff of horror movies, positing frightening predictions of 50% unemployment, $15/gallon gas, collapse of all banks, thus rendering access to our earnings impossible, and a global illuminati that will seek to control us, having immunized itself from the economic threat.  

I don't know how many of these predictions are true.  Fact is, no one does.  Sure, they can look at all the trends, and they can consult the great economic minds, but truth be told, none of us know the future until it actually happens.  It is easy to look at past history and notice some causal factors and inescapable effects.  But who among us really knows what will happen tomorrow?

But here's the crazy thing.  If everything they say truly did come to pass, there's nothing I can do.  The only advice anyone has ever given is to invest all your money in gold, but when you're recently unemployed and have little to nothing in your bank account, that's not an option.  So what am I to do?  What are any of us to do?  I am absolutely powerless … and that's terrifying.

But I didn't used to have a problem with being powerless.  That's one of the first things you must accept when getting sober, that you are powerless over alcohol.  As your sobriety evolves, that powerlessness extends to other things.  You are powerless over people, powerless over traffic, powerless over what others think of you, and so on.  Much like the concept of indifference mentioned in my last essay, the concept of powerlessness can be quite liberating, if you're willing to work on it.  I'm not always willing, especially in traffic … but I'm working on it.

The point is, my powerlessness is not my biggest issue.  So imagine how unsettling it is to wake up with a panic attack that hearkens back to the primal apocalyptic fears of my youth and is coupled with my blatant inability to do anything about it.  I was being gut-punched repeatedly by worry and anxiety, which has not been my baseline state for a long time.

Morning came, I called my wife back in California, and we talked … and a revelation came to me.  For the past week, I have been sleeping in the old loft bedroom where I slept as a child and later a teenager.  If you haven't been keeping track, I've been staying here at my childhood home with my mother because my father is in the hospital, teetering on the verge of going critical.  As such, I am housed in my old bedroom, now the guest room, and trying to look after Mom's needs during this difficult time.  At 3:00 a.m. this morning, I was waking up in my old room, the double bed positioned in roughly the same place as the twin bed I slept in as a kid.  I was laying on my right side, as I always did, staring across the room to the south, to the windows I used to gaze out of, listening to the sounds of the trains as they circled El Dorado in the distance.   How many times had I lay in this very spot, very position, very room, staring out the very same windows, praying over and over to God:  "Please don't destroy the world!  Surely you've got other ideas?"  

Everything around me is a freakish subconscious reminder of my childhood days of terror.  

It doesn’t help that there is incredible stress in our lives right now.  That recurring bad dream I used to have of losing a parent is possibly coming true as I mark my father's unstable condition in the hospital each day.  Basically, I am reliving childhood nightmares.    Is it any wonder I'm also having panic attacks?

I have heard stories of war veterans who appear to have moved on from the horrors of war, only to return to Europe or Vietnam and visit the site of a particularly traumatic battle and have a meltdown.  Their very geographic presence on this scene of the crime puts them into panic.  Likewise, adult victims of childhood abuse who return to the house of their abuse have suffered similar emotional breaks.  Geography on this pale blue dot we call earth is a powerful thing.  I wonder if it goes beyond the psychological reminders surrounding us to something deeper, something ethereal, some invisible energy that lingers long after we have gone.

Is it possible that that unrelenting fear of my childhood still lingers in my old bedroom?  Nothing particularly traumatic happened there, but I did spend a lot of time in that room going to pieces about the future.  It's rather scary, actually, how quickly this energy has stolen upon me; I am not that guy anymore, not the man who panics and wrings his hands.  I'm more of a "live in the moment" kind of chap, but my time in my old stomping ground has made me emotionally regress.

My wife reminded me that this is not the first time I've had panic attacks.  When we were in El Dorado, working on the production of our independent film Baby's Breath, those attacks came for me at regular intervals.  I recall how horrible they were, almost like delusional states.  I would sit in a room, staring at an open door, certain that something awful was about to walk through it, even if I was in the safest place on earth.  At the time, I chalked it up to the stress going through a movie shoot … but it's no coincidence that during that shoot I stayed with my parents, in my old childhood bedroom, to save money.  

So I guess we must be careful when returning to the scene of the crime, when we revisit the places where we once were at our worst.  As I say in the write-up for my novel Pitch, the past is often never where you think you left it.  In my case, a big chunk of my past is in my old bedroom at my parents' house.  It was not a place of ordeal, but it was a place where I simmered all of my fears in a big stew of apprehension, perhaps doing prep work for a lot of the negatives I would later manifest in my drinking days.

Who knows?  This mortal coil is littered with private war zones.  I may have stumbled into one.  Perhaps if I had prepared better, been more rigorous in my spiritual program, and taken better care of myself, none of this would be an issue.  But the good news is, I can turn it around right now.  Hell, any of us can.  Every moment is an opportunity to make a better decision than the last.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Indifference {Archive]

[originally published on September 4, 2012]

I begin this post with a story that's not necessarily relevant in and of itself, but it's kind of fun, and it sets up everything else.  Back in 2010, my wife and I got suckered into watching the season premiere of The Bachelorette, Season 6.  Now, while I like certain reality TV shows (Survivor and The Amazing Race continue to be compelling), I've never been a big fan of the Bachelor/Bachelorette series.  There's something almost tawdry about this idea of a bunch of men competing for the affections of one woman, as is the case in The Bachelorette (the opposite scenario is staged for The Bachelor).  It creates a zero sum world where said woman is characterized as such an amazing catch that all the other options are removed from the equation, and a bunch of nice but often vapid young men are obliged to fight for her affections rather than exploring their many alternatives.

I mean, dig it: When I met my wife, I had to compete with a couple of other men, and I welcomed it ... but if there had been 30 other guys in the mix, I might have thrown up my hands and said, "Who needs the exercise?"  As such, this series often deteriorates into a sideshow of sorts, with some competitors resorting to freakish behavior to win (at least that was the case when ESPN analyst Jesse Palmer was The Bachelor).

Still, I settled in for The Bachelorette, Season 6, and damned if I wasn't hooked on the geek show from the get-go.  The first episode was kind of fun anyway.  The bachelorette in question, Ali Fedotowsky, is sequestered in an isolated villa near Los Angeles like one of the peasant victims in Pasolini's Saló.  She is joined by 30 or so men, a number she whittles down to about 15 or 20 in the first hour.  The way some of these clowns postured for Ali was hilarious, but there were a few jewels in the crowd, intelligent gentlemen who made real connections with Ali.
Well, I watched the whole season, if you didn't watch it yourselve you can read all about it on Wikipedia.  Like most reality TV, I soon forgot about The Bachelorette despite its rather interesting carnival acts (like Justin the wannabe pro wrestler and Casey the sensitive pseudo-poet who got a rose tattoo on his wrist).  Reality TV is like McDonald's, you realize.  It's kind of tasty and fills you up, but it doesn't linger on your palate.  Other forms of entertainment are like an exceptional meal at a Paris café, but not The Bachelorette.  Apologies to all involved.

Flashforward two years to the summer of 2012, and I'm up in Burbank for an afternoon, participating in The Great American Pitchfest.  The Pitchfest is an arena where screenwriters can pitch their ideas to representatives from various production companies and other industry professionals.  I've been to a few of these before, gotten bites on some of my work, and made some outstanding friends, so I've always found the process to be well worth the entry fee.  So there I was, walking about the premises, considering which of the 150 or so companies I wanted to pitch to next ... and there in the crowd is one of the four finalists from The Bachelorette, Season 6--Frank Neuschaefer (pictured above).  

I recognized Frank at once, which says something given how forgettable the show is.  Frank was one of the stand-out personalities of Season 6, a smart, sensitive guy who seemed to be Ali's soulmate until what appeared to be a late-season crisis of conscience that compelled him to quit the show.  He was unfairly painted as a villain by reality TV blogs everywhere, which is why he's kind of hard to forget, plus he's got really cool glasses. 

Naturally, I went up to introduce myself, thinking I'd grab a quick photo to email to my wife and stepdaughter (and I got that photo, by the way, but I won't post it here; I'm frowning in the photo for some reason, making my jowls seem saggy, and when standing next to a handsome guy like Frank I come off looking like Ernest Borgnine).  Afterward, we started talking.  Frank, of course, was at the Pitchfest for the very same reason I was; he's an aspiring writer with solid ideas to pitch.  The more we talked, the more I realized how much we have in common.  We both share a passion for writing, almost maddeningly so, and when Frank told me that the thought of doing anything other than writing was depressing to him, I nodded in agreement.

Later, we got to talking philosophy, about matters of the intellect and spirit, and that's when Frank shared something that has stayed with me these months since.  He had apparently been reading about some great philosopher who had aspired to live a world without want, without any attachment to earthly possessions.  It was exciting watching Frank's eyes light up as he shared this, and it reminded me of the many moments I've had teaching when a younger student grasps the work of a one of my favorite authors.  "It was fascinating," Frank explained.  "This man actually aspired to be in such a state that if his city was burning, he could stand up and walk out of the fire needing only his robe and his walking staff."  

What Frank was describing was someone who had become what I call a God-fool.  I take this term from the book God's Fool by George N. Patterson.  Patterson actually lived in such away, as a God-fool, by giving away all of his money and earthly goods save a couple of changes of clothes and then trusting solely on God to provide and lead him.  It's a powerful book, and although Patterson's prose can get a bit condescending, its still worth the read.

My conversation with reality star Frank Neuschaefer was a mere three months ago, almost to the date.  It's almost surreal in hindsight: consider Matt Krause, a silver-haired leaping gnome, having a deep metaphysical conversation with a dreamy reality star about the bliss of aspiring to be God-fools.  A lot has happened since then.  I've written Frank a couple of times, and he promptly writes back, and although we both have that common bond in our love of the written word, I haven't had the time to sustain a real correspondence with him.  

Still, I was reminded of my conversation with Frank a couple of days ago while visiting the hospital where my Dad still resides in questionable health.  This reminder was so powerful in its serendipity that I have to share another tale.

My father is not well; I've made that abundantly clear.  At this writing, when I visit him he jolts and jerks in and out of consciousness in his hospital bed, in a state of delirium from his rapid-fire rollercoaster ride between reality and dream.  He is disoriented, frustrated, and often gruff.  Two days ago, when I visited him by myself, was no exception.  It was tragic to see, depressing, and as I fought back the urge to cry, I went looking for a quiet place to meditate alone.  First I went to the tiny chapel on the 5th floor, but there were people in there.  I considered the public bathroom next my father's room, but it is a single unisex that usually has a line of two or three people waiting for it.  

So I wandered about the hospital, taking the elevator from floor to floor, just moving, moving, moving, as if running from my grief and stress.  Finally, on the 2nd floor in the wing that connects the main building to the parking garage, I found a bathroom that no one was using.  I went inside.  It had a stall and a urinal, so I went into the stall, locked it, and prayed.  Very strange, praying alone on a toilet I wasn't actually using ... but hear me out.

I'm not sure what I was asking of my Higher Power.  All I know is I was afraid and confused.  I needed guidance.  I needed help.  And just then, the door to the bathroom opened, and a man's rich voice filled the air:

"Some enchanted evening," he sang in perfect pitch.  "You may see a stranger."  He stepped up to the urinal, and I heard him unzip his pants.  "You may see a stranger ... across a crowded room."

It was one of the most uncomfortable moments I've had in awhile, and yet there was so much joy in his voice, singing this classic showtune as he urinated, that I got caught up in the moment.  My mouth opened without me thinking about it, and suddenly I was singing too: "And somehow you know, you know even then ..."

I heard the man laughing.  "I love that song!"

I came out to wash my hands just as he too was arriving at the adjascent sink, and after finishing the first stanza of "Some Enchanged Evening" together we introduced ourselves.  His name was Terry, a retired obstetrician who now serves as a volunteer counselor at the hospital, and we spent the next five minutes talking about music and showtunes.  Minutes later, when I stepped out into the hall with him, he looked at me and said, "So ... what's your story? Why are you here?"

I told him about my father.  He nodded.  He shared with me that he had lost his wife to cancer, and it had been painful to come to the hospital every day and watch her slowly die.  "It sounds like your father is not there yet," he said.  "Even now, there is hope, no?"

I agreed there was hope.  

"Let me tell you about St. Ignatius of Antioch," he said.  "Every day, before I go to work, I go to the chapel and read one of his meditations, and then I meditate on them myself."

That seemed pretty cool, and I asked him to tell me more.

"St. Ignatius believed we are on this earth to honor God, with words, with thoughts, with actions," said Terry.  "All the things of the earth are here for our use.  But we cannot keep them.  Someday, we will all die and must leave them behind, which is why true happiness is found in indifference to them."

That word jumped out at me.  Indifference.  Indifference was what Frank Neuschaefer was describing in his story of the philosopher, an indifference to possessions so profound that when his city burned, the great thinker could walk out with nothing more than a robe and a walking staff.  Indifference.  What a powerful albeit unsettling concept. 

"We are to live without preference," said Terry.  "We are not to prefer health over sickness, wealth over poverty, companionship over aloneness.  We honor God by the way we live and treat others.  To the things of this earth left for our use, we are to remain indifferent.  "

That was a brick in the head.  No preference to health over sickness?  That kind of sucked in light of what my father was going through.  And yet, it made sense.  If any or all of us were to use our lives in the service of others, what would things like health or wealth matter?  The crazy thing is, I know this to be true, no matter how hard I have wanted to resist it.  Indifference is indeed bliss, for I have experienced moments of meditation where I had actually achieved such a state ... and when I did, it seemed that everything I had previously desired came to me in spades.  

I have often told the story of the years of solitude after a particularly painful break-up.  I used to sit alone in my tiny apartment, praying, meditating, wishing I had a companion with whom I could share my life.  I prayed and prayed, and that companion never came, and finally, I gave up.  One Sunday afternoon, I reached a profound state of indifference and spoke aloud to my Higher Power: "If you want me to be alone for the rest of my life, I will be alone.  It's your call, I accept it, and I'm good with it."  And I was good.  I was truly indifferent to my previous fears of living without a friend or dying without a witness.

The very next day after I said that prayer--the very next day--I met my the woman who is now my wife.

That afternoon two days ago in the hospital, I found the strength to face another day, to look upon my father's health with indifference.  As harsh as that sounds, what it really means is that I have no power over my father's health.  He will progress or deteriorate as he will, and the best I can do is honor this Higher Power of mine by being the best son to my father I can be.  I am not indifferent to my father, but I can be indifferent to his condition.  I can refuse to let his delirious state have any power of me.  Like George N. Patterson, I can choose to be a God-fool.  It sounds crazy, but it's actually kind of liberating.  After all, "God's fool" is a title often attributed to another great Saint, perhaps the most well-known Saint in the world--St. Francis of Assisi. 

That day at the Pitchfest, Frank Neuschaefer described a great thinker who was truly free.  I'm sure it's no coincidence that the name Frank means free, as does the name Francis (as in St. Francis of Assisi, the original God-fool).  Oh, and in case I didn't mention it, the name of the hospital where my father is staying is ... Via Christi St. Francis.

Time to write that church hymn set to the tune of The Twilight Zone theme.

  

Divine Thwart and the Last-Minute Delivery System [Archive]

[originally published on September 3, 2012]

Last evening, I drove to the hospital to spend the night with my father.  We had received reports of severe agitation, and it was thought that if a family member spent the night with him, perhaps he would calm down.  I volunteered last night; ever since my sobriety began, I have noticed a calmness with Dad when we are together.  Perhaps it is because he has seen the worst of me, has ridden out the storm, and although he has always loved me, he now likes and appreciates me as well.  Whatever the case, I assigned myself to the task of spending the night with Dad.

The result was not good.  Dad continued to be agitated, kicking his covers off, tugging at his wires.  When the nurses came in, he was quite good for them, but with me, he was, in his delirium, aggressive and gruff.  I realized at about 2:00 a.m. this morning that I was doing more harm than good, that by having a familiar face there against whom he could vent his frustration, Dad was actually more agitated.  And so I left, drove back to Mom's house--the house in which I grew up--and wept.

It has been a weird couple of months.  Almost eight weeks ago, on a Thursday night, July 19, 2012, I received a phone call informing me that I was laid off from my day job.  I fell apart.  I sat alone in my rental house in Los Angeles, fighting back a quiet, smoldering rage against God.  My wife was out of town, unable to buffer the shockwaves of the stress, so it was all my own pity party as I crouched on my office floor and wondered what I would do next.  

This moment, I later realized, was what Christian writer John Eldredge calls a Divine Thwart, that moment when God or the Universe tears down a false self we have built so something better can be put in its place.  For more on this concept of Divine Thwarts, check out Eldredge's book Wild At Heart; even if Christ is not the God of your understanding, you will find some powerful wisdom in his words. 

But a good friend of mine likes to say that God is the master of the last-minute delivery system.  I've always seen this delivery system preceded by a Divine Thwart, and July 19 was no exception.  About an hour into my Divine Thwart and my subsequent antithesis of meditation, the phone rang again.  This time, it was good news.  It was Balboa Press, informing me that I had won first place in their fiction contest, and that I would receive a publishing package through which I could now share my labor of love, the novel Pitch, with the masses.   

Shandean Digression I:  In August 1990, I was falling apart.  I had lived in Emporia, Kansas, the primary setting of the novel Pitch, for all of seven years, and after finally earning my Bachelor's degree at Emporia State and then kicking around town wasting precious days, I was without resources, without a job, and without a plan.  Despondent and desperate, I picked up the phone to call my father, to beg for money.  I dialed, the phone rang, Dad picked up ... and I began to explain my plight.  

"Dad," I said.  "I have a bit of a problem ..."  Just then, there was a beep in my ear.  Someone else was trying to call through on the line through the call-waiting feature.  "Hold on a minute, Dad," I said, and then I switched over to the new call.  

"Is Matthew Krause there?" a rich male voice said.  "This is Dr. Brondell, from the English department at Kansas State University."  I vaguely remembered Dr. Brondell and said hello.  "Last January," he continued, "you applied for graduate school at K-State."  

I remembered Dr. Brondell then.  Yes, I had been on the K-State campus in Manhattan, Kansas, the previous January.  I was in Manhattan, Kansas, because I had tickets to a Motley Crue concert at Bramlage Coliseum, and as my friends and I had arrived quite early that afternoon I decided to explore the campus.  On a whim, I wandered into the English department, met Dr. Brondell, and wound up applying for graduate school.  Within a couple of weeks, I received a letter of acceptance, but because I had no money, I was unable to enroll.

"Here's the deal, Matt," Dr. Brondell said.  "We had a graduate teaching assistant drop out at the last minute.  If you're still interested in coming to K-State, we can plug you right in as a GTA."  What this meant, I learned, is that I would teach Composition I and II, my tuition would be paid for three years, and I would receive a monthly stipend.  Just like that, in a moment of directionlessness, God had come through ... at the last minute.  

Dr. Brondell said they needed me the very next day for orientation, of course, which meant that I would have to get up to the K-State campus right away.  As such, when I ended the call and switched back to my father, I said, "Here's the problem, Dad.  I need help moving to Manhattan ..."

Shandean Digression II: On November 13, 2000, I was again at the end of yet another Divine Thwart.  My wife and I had been living in Los Angeles for two years, and although I had been kicking around from temp job to temp job, I had not yet found my niche.  I had written some screenplays, and they had been received fairly well by those producers I could get to read them, but there had been no bites, even though two of my scripts had placed in the quarterfinals and semifinals consecutively for the Nicholl Fellowship.

November 13 was a Monday.  The previous Friday, November 10, my temp job at Warner Music Group had ended.  I had contacted the temp agencies where I was signed up, but they had no work for me, and so after my wife left for work that morning, I was alone in our tiny rental, weighing my options.  A man ties up so much of himself in his ability to generate income; it is, in this society, his grand and perhaps erroneous demonstration of masculinity.  As such, when a man is without work, he can become afraid, terrified, feels as if he is less than a man, feels judged by his peers and especially his woman.

I remember sitting on the sofa next to our north window, which looked out onto residential Hermosa Beach and the bird-of-paradise flowers growing in our front yard.  I folded my hands.  I prayed for guidance.  I paid lip service to the ubiquitous "Thy will  not mine be done."

And the phone rang.  It was a man named Casey Wolfe, who was in creative development at Disney.  Apparently, my screenplay, Play Action, was a finalist for the 2001 Walt Disney Pictures/ABC Television Screenwriting Fellowship.  Casey and I set up an interview, and ... well, the rest is history.  I became one of nine Disney Fellows for 2001, which not only paid the bills for a year but also gave me that year to focus on what I loved most--writing.  

Looking back at both of those last-minute deliveries from God or the Universe, I am struck by something.  In both instances, writing was involved.  At K-State, the last-minute delivery was a call to teach writing, and at Disney it was to actually do writing.  And in the case of the last-minute delivery last July, again I am called to write, this time to see my novel published.  If these moments are what some believers call God shots, and I have no reason to doubt this, what does it mean?

My ego wants to believe that God wishes upon me incredible success as a writer, but that is arrogant and presumptive.  But I do believe that my ability to write and my passion to do so are gifts from God, and whenever I veer from that path for far too long, some inexplicable force thwarts my journey and sets me back to writing again.  To what end?  Only God or the Universe knows, but for the moment, that is where it is.

When I began working with Balboa Press on the manifestation of this manuscript, someone from marketing mentioned the significance of the title, Pitch, because of author Mike Dooley's use of pitching and baseball analogy to describe our engagement with the Universe.  Dooley posits that we have endless innings to pitch our ideas to the Universe, and the Universe, or God, decides which ones to hit out of the park.  

I like that idea.  And to be honest, the title Pitch is something of an accident.  Originally, since the novel is about a character haunted by past demons, I entitled it By Demons Driven.  But then I realized that I myself did not want to live a life driven by my demons but rather by the better angels of my nature.  Unfortunately, that "better angels" title has been used (and overused) already, so I decided that because the central character of the novel is a pitcher, I would simplify the title to Pitch.

Today, the galleys are in their final stages.  Pitch, my first pitch into the publishing world, will be arriving soon.  Meanwhile, my father, who has been an inspiration and a source of strength, the kindest and most supportive man I know, a man who has ridden out my storms when the demons drove the truck and still stood to protect me when those demons needed casting out ... now that man lies sick, on the razor edge between life and death, and I am here.  I know this is not permanent.  I know this strange and painful stress will end.  But I am here.  And that's all there is.

Meanwhile, my pitch is out there.  It is heading toward your home plate soon.  I hope it finds you well.  As for me, no Divine Thwart is permanent.  The Universe's UPS trucks are already on the move again ...

To Lead ... [Archive]

[originally posted August 31, 2012] 

I told you I was addicted to politics.  As the election campaigns heat up, I am struck by the mantra of leadership.  I am sad to say that I don't believe many of our leaders understand this term.  Granted, it is not my place to judge leaders, only to look for those examples of exceptional leaders after which I might model myself.  I  do have observations about the current crop of leadership in my country, but I will save those for another time.

I am currently watching the ESPN documentary The 16th Man directed by Clifford Bestall, which covers the events surrounding the 1995 Rugby World Cup, which united South Africa under President Nelson Mandela in the aftermath of apartheid.  I would strongly urge everyone to read the book Playing the Enemy by John Carlin to get a complete overview of these events, but if you don't have the time, The 16th Man is available to watch instantly on Netflix, and it's a good place to smart.

I found it interesting while watching The 16th Man to learn of how frightened the South African whites were when Mandela was elected president in April 1994.  The great fear among whites was that Mandela, who had spent 27 years in prison, would lead blacks in an uprising, as blacks outnumbered whites six-to-one.  But Mandela did not lead an uprising.  What he did instead was reach out to the whites, stating that they were a vital piece of a unified South Africa.  

In the film, two of Mandela's many grand gestures of peace stand out.  The first, and most obvious, focuses on rugby.  During the time of apartheid, rugby was considered the white man's game, a symbol of the white oppressors, and the Springbok logo on the heart of the South African team's jerseys was as hated by the blacks as the swastika is by the Jews.  There were moves by black leaders to have rugby abolished entirely, but Mandela urged them to reconsider; rugby was loved by the whites, almost rabidly so, and to abolish this sport would be akin to an act of war.  Mandela then scored another major coup by bringing the Rugby World Cup to South Africa.  Mandela became a devoted fan of the team, and he shocked his black supporters by standing before them wearing a Springbok jersey, almost the equivalent of Israeli president Shimon Peres waving a Palestinian flag.

The second of Mandela's many grand gestures towards peace, while mentioned in the film, is almost a footbote amid the high-octane energy of rugby.  One of Mandela's enemies at the time is white conservative leader Koos Botha, who admits onscreen that he believed Mandela a terrorist worthy of death.  How did Mandela respond?  He appointed Botha to a delegation.  This act sent a clear message that Mandela wanted to lead all of his people, not just those passionate followers who loved him.

In the mid 1990s, during the early years of my sobriety, I did not pay much attention to world affairs, so the story of Mandela and the 1995 Springbok rugby team escaped my attention.  I only stumbed upon it quite by accident a few years ago, which was the result of a series of strange coincidences:

In late 2007, my wife and I were watching Jay Leno on late-night TV because Jay's first guest was one of our favorite actors, Russell Crowe.  We lived in central Florida at the time, so when Crowe announced on Leno that he was bringing his rugby team, the South Sydney Rabbitohs, to Jacksonville for a friendly match against the Leeds Rhinos, we decided to get tickets in the hopes that we might catch a glimpse of Russell at the event.

The match was held in February 2008, and we did catch a glimpse of Russell at that event; I even got a few good pictures.  But the most exciting thing to come out of the day was that I developed a love of rugby.  At once, after watching this fascinating exhibition rugby match, I began to lurk on rugby message boards, learning more about the game.  I even made friends with a few Rabbitoh fans in Queensland, Australia, and we keep up correspondence to this day.

A couple of years later, mid 2008, I believe, I learned that one of my favorite actors from my childhood, Clint Eastwood, was making a movie about Nelson Mandela and the famous rugby game of 1995.  By now, I was a full-blown rugby fan, so I began to do research, and I found the book mentioned above (which was the source material for Eastwood's stirring film Invictus), and my love of rugby led me to develop a love of Mandela and all that he stood for.

Mandela is a true leader.  The hard, judgmental part of me wants to point fingers at the leaders here in America and say, "See?  You could take a page from this man's book!"  But I realize that I am taking the wrong approach.  When we see a person who inspires us, we should use his or her better qualities to inform our own growth, not as a measuring stick for someone else.  I can do nothing to mould Barack Obama or Mitt Romney into an image I find more suitable, one that more closely resembles Mandela, but I can try to mould myself into that image.  

The hardest part of this process--for me, anyway--is to adopt Mandela's rare ability to look at his most hateful enemies and still extend a hand of friendship.  But if any man had a reason to hate, it was Mandela--he was imprisoned for 27 years by these enemies, after all.  If Mandela can forgive and mend bridges that he himself did not burn, why cannot I?  In the Christian faith, the idea of Christ's forgiveness is difficult for some to grasp, but I believe the God of my understanding knows this, which is why he gives us other examples from our own present day.

I have heard many criticisms leveled against Mandela from those here in America resistant to some of his policy decisions (his record has a few things that make people from either side of the political aisle grip a bit).  My response to this is that he is not a god.  He is a man, and a man cannot please all of the people all of the time.  But if we look at his character, if we examine how this leader was able to make even his enemies live in peace with him, we might have a blueprint for making our own journeys a little easier.

That's the way I see it, anyway.

Do Prayers "Work"? [Archive]

[originally Published August 29, 2012]

I've been at the Via Christi Hospital in Wichita, Kansas, spending time with my Dad, who as of today has been inpatient for exactly one month.  The details of his case are long and varied and play out like a screenplay I might pitch as "House meets Lemony Snicket."  Suffice to say, the man has been sick, and the family is here, and hospital time requires a lot of waiting with moments of hope that start coming closer and closer together as his condition improves.

My father is a deeply spiritual man, a fine example of what I believe a Christian should be.  The convictions he holds are strong, but he has always left room for growth as his understanding of Spirit expands, and although he is firm on what he believes, he is receptive to others even if thei beliefs differ from his.  

Today, I've wanted to talk to him, and although he is alert and improving, he is far too tired to consider the kind of philosophical questions we normally discuss.  So I am forced to come here, to offer up what's on my mind in the hopes that you, dear reader, might have some thoughts of your own.

I notice on Twitter a discussion going on about whether or not prayer "works."  One person queried that if prayer "works," why do some airplanes crash and not others?  One might assume that on the flights where a plane went down, the occupants were praying right up to the end that God would save them.  So why didn't God answer that prayer?

Hard-line Christians might say that God did answer the prayer, and that the answer was no.  I've heard a few believers expand on that thought, saying that God has three answers to your prayers--"Yes," "No," and "Not now."  A friend of mine actually amended the "three answers" statement in the following way: God never says no to your prayers he only says "Yes," "Not now," or "I've got something better for you." But I feel that this is anthropomorphizing God, projecting human frailties on an all-powerful, all-loving Source of creation (tip of the hat to Dr. Dyer for use of the term "Source"), and by extension, this oversimplifies prayer.

It seems to me that people question whether or not prayer "works" because they want the idea of Spirit to be simple.  In the case of some believers, they don't want to think too hard on prayer but rather be given a simple equation that will work every time it's applied.  I almost want to compare this conception of prayer to the practice of medicine.  If a doctor discovers you have Staph aureus but also learns that it is sensitive to methicillin, he gives you methicillin.  For methicillin-sensitive Staph aureus (MSSA), we know methicillin in most cases works.  So why can't prayer work the same way?  Why can't we place our orders with God like we do at Sonic and have our requests delivered promptly by an angel dressed as a carhop on rollerskates?

Well, there is a new problem with the Sonic analogy--we have to pay for our food.  We have to offer currency of a specified amount for the items we ordered, so by projecting our own limited understanding on prayer, we start figuring in a reasonable rate of exchange.  How many good deeds do I need to perform in order to get my order filled?  This falls apart as well, of course, for we have seen many a person in life that we might define as "good" who endures great suffering, as well as many a "bad" person receiving abundant blessing.

So does prayer "work"?  I believe it does.  However, I believe we as a society have built up an erroneous idea of what prayer is supposed to be; ergo, we have an equally erroneous idea of how it is supposed to work.  We have a great many people who have an agreed-upon definition of prayer that fits it neatly into an if/then proposition: "If I take this action, then I should get this result every time."  

Imagine, of you will, an atheist trying to fit two pieces of pipe together.  

The Christian says, "You need a tool to tighten that pipe joint."

So the atheist finds a screwdriver and says, "Here's a tool.  I will use this to tighten the pipe joint."  He soon discovers that you can't tighten the pipe joint with a screwdriver, so he throws it across the room in disgust, bellowing:  "I knew it.  Tools don't work.  I refuse to believe in them."

The Christian then brings a pipe wrench:  "Here is the tool you need," he says, and he tightens the pipe joint.

The atheist growls:  "So why do tools only work sometimes and not others?  These tools you speak of seem rather arbitrary.  I can't see how you put your faith in these tools." 

Your thoughts?