Spiritual Stuff.

Technically I will never attain the title of “Clean Cut, Average American Guy”. There’s a few categories where I score above average. Conversely I score below average on one or two items on the list. And of course, there’s the whole gay thing that many believes sets me apart from the crowd. When I was younger I was told by a few people that I stood out like a neon light. One former beau went so far to tell me that I was kind of embarrassing to be around in public. I guess “personal expression” wasn’t really his forte. Or maybe I expressed myself too much. But that was thirty years ago and times have changed.

For a while I had a bad ass side to my personality. Cocky. Edgy. Alternative-ish. I’ve seen things, experienced things, done things that would make most average Americans blush at first glance. I’ve been to paradise but I was lucky to have been to me along the way. At age 48 I’m still a little cocky, a little edgy. I look at the world from a different angle.

But the clean cut, average American side of me has become my modus operandi. I like a beer or two from time to time. I don’t need a fine wine to make me happy. I like hanging out with the other pilots at the airport. I like just hanging out with friends. My radio career-fed tendencies to be out loud and public about my life has waned quite a bit. I don’t need to strut around like a peacock with a big, red beard for my feathers. I don’t want an outlandish mustache anymore. I don’t need to be the shiniest coin in the piggy bank.

For the relatively first time in my life, I’m pretty comfortable with who I am, today, right now, at age 48. I’ve never been really comfortable in my skin. I’ll never be a soldier, I’ll never be a centerfold, I’ll never be the slim jim that’s just a little bit zesty.

I’m just a guy with a dad bod that feels good about where he is today. I am comfortable in my skin, with who I am and where I am today. It’s taken me a really long time to come to this realization.

For the vast majority of my life, my personal quest has been, “what can I change about myself?”. My new quest is “what works now and what can I do better?”. After all these years my baggage is a matched set.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Earl and I started putting up the inside Christmas decorations last night. The trees will go up last, and yes, I said trees, plural, as we have decided to have three trees this year: a Disney tree, a travel tree (with the ornaments we have collected on our travels) and the big tree that has all of our traditional ornaments.

After being in this house for 11 years some of the Christmas lights have given up the ghost and had to be tossed in the trash as we have not been able to get them going again. I don’t know what it is about lights sitting in storage but several strands decided they didn’t want to work this year.

Chick and Cow don their gay apparel.

We are both trying hard to find the spirit of the holidays, and we are finding it to some extent, but something doesn’t feel like it’s clicked completely into place. Perhaps getting together with friends and family over the next couple of weeks will help the situation.

In the meanwhile, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here.

A number of years ago Earl bought me this ornament and delivered it to me at the office. I was working in radio at the time, in fact, it was my last Christmas in radio, and honestly, at that time I wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit. I wasn’t feeling an holiday spirit at all. I just wanted to get the season over with. I didn’t want to buy any presents, I was sick of writing ad copy that was designed to convince radio listeners that they should be buying cheap junk to give in the name of baby Jesus and frankly, the spirit just wasn’t moving me.

Earl’s gesture that day helped me immensely and as a reminder of what a lucky man I am, this ornament hangs year round on the decorative table next to “my chair” in our great room. I look at this ornament every day and I smile.

Earl told me that he wasn’t feeling the spirit this year. He’s been in pain since he pulled a muscle in his back a while back, a despite the amped up meds the doctor gave him last weekend, he’s still feeling that pulled muscle. A lot. Like everyone else in the country, we have monetary concerns and honestly, company bonuses or raises and such, while always appreciated, just fall at the wrong time of year. Though it’s the 7th, we still have no decorations up around the house.

I brought the ornament to the kitchen table where Earl was sitting when he told me that he isn’t feeling the holiday spirit. I reminded him of the smile this ornament brought to my face 10 years ago and I hoped that he would feel the need to smile as well.

He did. It’s a start.

Before starting this blog entry a few moments ago, I was outside wrestling with decorations that were not put away properly last year (that’s my fault, by the way), so I’m wrangling with wires and extension cords and broken bulbs and lights that just don’t want to cooperate. Earl would love to help me but his sore back is preventing him from doing so. All of these elements in this paragraph are making us a little snappish at one another.

We’re not the snappish type. At least, we never used to be. Where’s the holiday spirit?

Relatives are asking me what I want for Christmas. What I really want is never the right answer. I want nothing. I have all that I want. People never believe me when I say this, because as a dreamer type I tend to dream out loud and make declarations like, “what would you think about a trip to Iceland?” but the truth of the matter is, I’m quite content right here, right now, at home. Honestly, the only thing I want is a “Reduction of Complexity”. I no longer want the biggest house or the baddest Jeep or the fastest Mac on the block. My history betrays this simple need because honestly, I’ve been a complicated person for a long time. Earl tries to keep up with “The Tango J.P.” and no one does this better, but if there’s one thing that’s going to help me find the spirit of the holiday, it’s just keeping the whole thing simple. Gaudy and bright and colorful? Yes! Needlessly over the top to be impressive? Nope.

I want to show Earl the spirit of the holiday with a colorful display of festivity all over our home but more importantly, by keeping life a little more simple that it’s been lately. No amount of presents under the tree on the 25th will ever equal what’s in our hearts, so I guess the best thing to do is just share what’s in my heart with the world and let that manifest itself in simple ways.

Merry Christmas.

Faithfully Religionless: Timber Hawkeye at TEDxHonolulu 2012.

When we first met you were just a little over two years old. You had already lived with two other families. The guy you lived with before had you in a little trailer and was going to sentence you to a short life because he didn’t have room for you anymore. That’s where Big Daddy stepped in and said, “nope, he’s coming home to us.”

You looked at me from under the dining room table. You were pissed because you hated car rides and you had just ridden in a car and was brought into a strange house. You had been through this routine before. You’d have to train a new family from scratch.

Little Daddy got on his hands and knees and looked at you and started talking in this ridiculous cat voice at you. A 29 year old man should not be using his falsetto in that way, but that’s what Little Daddy did. You had been called Kojak up until now, but you didn’t respond to that name. Your air of disinterest was apparent. It was then that you became Tommy, or Tom for short. The Kojak would stick around in the middle name, just as a reminder of your journey thus far, but for the next 16 years would you be Tom. You’d live in two different houses with a couple of guys that loved you like their son. You were family. Little Daddy would race you around the house, run up and down the stairs with you and snuggle under the blankets with you. The ridiculous high pitched voice Little Daddy used became a less frequent thing. For 16 years you were the prince of the family. What you wanted you got, you had Big Daddy and Little Daddy trained to be good humans and you even had the Cub under control by staring him down at supper time. You heard all the stories, knew all the secrets and you even played by the rules right up to the end.

Big Daddy, Little Daddy and Cub, and all the others that you have met over the years, will miss you very much, Our Sweet Prince, and we all say Thank You for being a shining light in our lives. Have fun with your older brother, say hi to those that are waiting for you on the other side and we’ll see you when we meet again.

I wrote the following around 1:30 p.m. this afternoon.

The time is near. We know that. No longer able to walk, you still seem grateful when we carry you. You’re no longer interested in food, you just want to rest. You have always loved laying in the sun, so I take you out on the porch and set you down on your favorite spot. I block off the porch entrance so you don’t mistakenly fall down off the porch.

I look at you and blink my eyes slowly, you do the same in return. You can barely breathe, but you’re purring. I sit by you, my eyes are filled with tears. You put your paw on my hand. I sit with you like that for a long while. You seem at peace.

You put your head down and take a nap. I rearrange myself to be comfortable and still productive at work. I’m watching you. I’m making sure you’re enjoying your time in the sun.

Our cat Tom is over 18 years old. He’s struggling and last night it appeared that he was no longer able to walk. I made him comfortable before I went to bed; he had hidden himself behind the entertainment center in the living room. His breathing was steady but he was wheezing.

Earl and I had come to the decision that if it was at all possible, we would give Tom the dignity of passing on at home. He __hates__ going anywhere in ways that I have never seen a cat hate something before. He loses his mind completely in the car. The idea of taking him to the vet when he is obviously in his final days tore us apart. As long as he wasn’t in pain or some other awful distress, we would make him comfortable and give him the opportunity to pass at home.

Tom couldn’t walk this morning. He’d stand up and fall right over on his left side. He yowled when this happened. Earl and I met for lunch and had the conversation. We didn’t want to see him suffer and Earl would contact the vet to make arrangements.

Earl couldn’t get through to the vet.

I came home from lunch and found Tom laying on the mat I had set up for him. He was sleeping. His area was in the front living room; he had managed to get to the middle of the room to pee and then he had gone back to the mat. I figured he had crawled on his front paws. As I walked by him, he felt the breeze of me passing by and looked at me. I looked back at him and decided that it was a beautiful day and since he loved laying in the sun so much, I’d set an area up on the front porch so he could sun bathe, probably for the last time.

Nervous about leaving him on the porch unattended, I sat with him, where he put his paw on my paw in an obvious gesture of comfort (for whom?). He purred. He gave me the eye blink. I sat on the porch with him, tears streaming from my face, telling him that we loved him and that he was OK to do what he needed to do.

Being careful as to not neglect my work duties, I grabbed my work laptop and wrote code sitting where I could keep an eye on him while he settled in for a nap in the sun. This worked well until I had a conference call. I decided to bring him inside and rearrange the mat in a sunny spot in the room while I went downstairs and participated in the call for work.

An hour later when I came upstairs, the mat was empty. He had gotten himself to the kitchen and had found his typical afternoon sunny spot on the floor in front of the patio doors. I figured he’d pulled himself there by his front paws since his back legs weren’t working.

As I walked into the kitchen, he stood up. He was very shaky and very tentative, but his tail went up in the air and he walked over to me. I stopped so that he would have the dignity of walking to greet me as he intended. It took a little longer than usual and he wobbled a bit, but he walked over and sniffed my foot. He looked up and blinked.

Earl never got through to the vet, so no arrangements have been made. I think Tom has told us not to count him out yet. He’ll go when he’s ready and not a moment before. As I type this, he’s arranged himself into a comfortable position.

He’s enjoying another moment in the sun.

I’m still at Lock 20.

As I sit here and listen to the sounds of nature and smells the beautiful lilac scents, I have come to realize that this is really energizing me for my lunch hour. I feel very relaxed. Stress has melted away.

Perhaps sitting in a concrete or paved driveway at lunchtime (when I’m working from the office) is not the proper way to calm down and refocus for the afternoon. I think starting next week I need to seek out a better lunch time spot to get away and relax. I shall have to go spot scouting and see what I can find.

The concrete apparently isn’t working for me.

I can still remember the first time I had this dream. I was very young in my own little bed in the bedroom of the mobile home I grew up in. Since it was prior to my sister sharing the room courtesy of bunk beds, this means it was before I entered kindergarten. The details of that first version were scarce, the scene was very impressionistic. Later versions of the dream, which would occur ever few years would fill in some of the details here are there.

The world around me is dark. As I open my eyes, the ground has just stopped shaking. The wind is warm and the ferocity of the wind comes and goes. Orange and red hues light the area around me. The light is flickering. I feel heat but I don’t feel a burning situation. People are running in fear but I’m not scared. There is a cliff or a cavern that I’m standing near. I don’t know if it’s deep or wide, there’s just something in the landscape. A woman with long hair runs by, looking back briefly and then continues her hurried pace. I look down at the ground and I look at my hands. When I had the dream as a kid, my hands were big. The last time I had the dream, my hands are my hands. I look up and straight ahead. More red and orange light. Someone is walking towards me.

There was always some version of a conversation. “You know that it’s the right thing to do.” The person gestures around at the people running away. Off in the distance, I see one or two people standing around calmly, just as I am doing. I feel no fear.

“It is”, I reply.

I look at the face of the person speaking to me. I could never see who it was until I was in my 30s. When I couldn’t see their face, I’d look down and grab their hand, my right hand grabbing their left.

A variation of “Let’s do it”, as we grab hands and run towards the cavern or space.

“I love you!” is exchanged simultaneously.

We then jump. Admittedly, once in a while there would be the “bionic” sound effect, but that was apparently just part of the bonus material as it’s happened only once or twice of probably two dozen repeats of the same dream. As we jump, the scene gets more red and orange.

We never land. I always wake up after we jump but before whatever is going to happen, happens. Strangely enough, I wake up smiling and feeling very peaceful because I was holding their hand when I jumped.

The other person never had a face until I met Earl. The half-dozen or so times of having the dream since the late 90s, Earl has always been the one holding my hand. He’s the one telling me that he loves me. He’s jumping with me. Because it’s the right thing to do.

And this morning, I woke up smiling and feeling very peaceful.

No bonus material on this run of the dream, though.

Since this week seems to be about metaphysical stuff in some ways, I thought I would share with the class an adventure that I shared with my sister yesterday.

Our father passed on a little over a year ago when his home-built airplane (the second plane he built from scratch) crashed into a wooded area near the airport he was testing the plane at. This occurred during the second flight of the plane. Earlier this year I came to terms with the loss of my father. I had had a couple of dreams about him including one very vivid dream in particular where he told me what had happened and that everything was okay. While I will always feel sad that I can’t call him up and tell him the latest road trip adventure that Earl and I have gone on or reminisce with him about something, I know that I’m beyond the grief and pain. I have accepted and I have continued with life, the way I know that he would want it to be.

My sister wanted to see a psychic. I didn’t really feel the need to see a psychic, because of the dreams and the way I was feeling, but I agreed to go along with her for moral support. I had been to a psychic before. This first psychic told me that I was a “bright star that would burn out quickly” and when he tried to cleanse me chakra he felt compelled to hit me upside the head a couple of times. This all took place in the back of a hair salon, so I should have known something was fishy about this guy.

I’m digressing.

The psychic we went to see is pretty well known. She has been doing her thing for a long time. My aunt is her virtual assistant and my aunt assured us that she knew nothing about the people she was going to meet. I met my sister at her office in a hilltop business park.

When we stepped into the entrance of her professional suite it was pitch black. There were no lights on anywhere in the room and there were no windows to let in any natural light. I figured that this must be significant so we propped the door open a little bit so we could see each other with light from the hallway, but otherwise it was completely dark. There was a little sign on the conference room table urging us to just wait and she would be with us in a bit. Sounds of a reading came from an adjacent room. The mood was interesting with the pitch darkness of the room. Come to find out, the building was experiencing electrical problems, there was no other significance to sitting in the dark.

When we met with the medium, she asked us to naturally say our full name and our birth dates. She didn’t bolt out of the room to Google someone, she didn’t speak into a hidden microphone and I scouted the room out for signs of wi-fi. None of this was present. She simply sat in the chair across from us and explained that she would go into a trance-like state and she asked we not bounce our legs from nervousness or fidget in our chairs as that would make her nauseated and she could potential throw up.

Ok, then.

After saying a silent prayer her whole demeanor changed and her face lit up in a very beautiful way. Gazing upwards about two feet above our heads, she smiled and said hello to several souls that had come to visit.

That’s when Dad arrived.

I’m not going to get into the details of the reading because, well, it’s kind of personal, but some things that she did get completely right:

“He says he fell from the sky. What does that mean?”

“There was nothing he did wrong, it was the engine. ‘The bastards rebuilt it wrong.’ There was no way he could recover.”  (Interestingly, my dream journal of that dream says, “There was no way I could recover.”)

“If he had to go, this was the best way to do it because he was doing what he loved. He thinks that everyone should go this way.”

“He was there in the dream that you about him. He was really there. He knows you already know what happened.”

The medium accurately conveyed things about Dad and our family that she couldn’t possibly know. No Googling or anything would give the details of some of the things she mentioned. His personality came through what she was telling us. His sense of values was accurately portrayed. Names were said without coaching or input. Long story short, I fully believe that we talked to our Dad yesterday. I feel more comfort than I did after my own grieving process. 

As the medium went into the trance I felt goosebumps and a radiance in my body that I have felt only two other times in my life and it was absolutely amazing. I may have gone into the room a skeptic (as learned from that other experience from the psychic that wanted to beat on me), but I left yesterday knowing that Dad was with the other family members that have passed on and that he was doing just fine. He was a little startled from having arrived there so abruptly, but he was just fine.

There’s a lot of people that don’t believe in life after this life or that folks have the ability to see the other side. Dionne Warwick, Ms. Cleo and their ilk have kind of turned everyone sour and cynical when it comes to psychic phenomena, but I feel that what we experienced yesterday was real.

If you feel the need to visit a medium, please send me an email and I will share her contact information with you.

Thanks for the visit, Dad.