This is great. Over the course of this last week, I have settled on four different stories I wanted to tell. It’s funny, none of them felt like they deserved the full-on treatment, but I really liked each and had the brainstorm of just sharing all of them and seeing what happens.
Let me start at the beginning. After each one of my stories, I start thinking about the next one and none have involved a bolt of lightening, miraculously writing itself. So, this week started out with me thinking it was time for me to write about how incredibly screwed up things are. No matter where you look, you see the crack of the plumber’s hairy ass, as he bends over to fix your sink. I even had the title set, “In My Opinion.” Truthfully, I don’t see any happy endings, no matter where I look.
In my weekly podcast, Naked News, I always lead with the climate catastrophe that is already here and making itself completely at home, while we are busy killing each other, or, at the very least, starving each other to death. The challenge is trying to write a story about all this, without it sounding like a suicide note.
I confess to wrestling with stuff like the above. Frankly, I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to pin down the forever debacle of our species. Truthfully, I didn’t have a good feeling about my doing justice to support the title from the beginning. This needs an Einstein or a Buddha, but not me. Too see clearly what is going on and to be able communicate it “effectively” to others, requires one of those special beings, who comes along millennially, at least, in my opinion.
So, I shitcanned the divine approach to the world for the coming week, primarily because I couldn’t figure out how to pull it off. Miraculously, I was handed the perfect, replacement story, completely on the opposite end of the concept spectrum. I was getting an office chair today, a really good one. I instantly figured, what could be more grounded than a chair story? I could write a whole story about how the perfect chair provides you with a high-class, box seat to so many one-of-a-kind mind, moments, because the writer sits in this damn chair. Hell, I pretty much live in the chair, facing the computer, my conduit to the world outside.
I am not quite done with the chair yet; we’ll come back to it shortly. When I initially thought about making the chair my next story, it sounded great to me, primarily because it brought me back to earth, considering how far i was trying to travel at the beginning of the week. Then, it began to feel kind of gimmicky and contrived, dangerously close to pandering. Ultimately, who cares about a goddamn chair? It started to feel like blowing up a balloon with a pin hole in it.
I was on my way out the door at the brewery, but made the mistake of checking in at the bar to see the game four score between Celtics and Warriors. Honestly, I really could care less about any sports. I have no favorites and have never gotten into an argument about any team in any sport, being better than any other team in any sport. What I do love is that most all conflicts take place in the sandbox of immature men. Differences are resolved, sometimes with the exchange of money and other times with an insult regarding someone’s lineage, but no one is ever supposed to die as a result. Truly, that is the nature of sport, from gladiator to goalie. While there may be things like penalties, no one is tortured or killed.
I think there were around eight minutes left in the fourth quarter and the score was as close as it could be. What got my attention when I was leaving, was simply the game. It was too damn close in the fourth quarter for me to leave. OK, being from NYC, we wish only the worst for any team from Boston, so I hooked into the game.
What I love most about sports is you can disappear into a contest and everything around you gets temporarily put on hold, because it just has to wait. When I get into my writing groove, it’s hard to take a break, but sports will do that for me. Clearly, this episode had to be number three, everything suspended until the resolution. Man, I was yelling for Curry, who had a game you don’t get to see very often.
Right before getting sucked into the screen on my way out the door, Laura sent me the most extraordinary piece of writing from a woman, living in Poland. Her story and how she tells it is mesmerizing and transportive and tragic. While it instantly felt like the last part of this four parter, and I’ll tell you why in a second, there is no way in the world I could do justice to what this women does every, single day.
Amber and her husband, Paul, have converted their storybook, looking home into a refuge for families from Ukraine. it seemed like a perfect way to end this tale. The idea that there are exceptional human beings, who are committed to making a difference is a kind of spiritual antidote for the hopelessness I was saddled with in the beginning paragraphs. There have always been and there will always be angels among us.
I will share more of their work under a separate cover, because it is much too deserving to be squeezed into a couple of lines, while I make a self-serving point or two. Christ, it is the least I can do.
Let me do a quick return to the chair from heaven. I put it in its perch by the desk and then sat in it. Simply stated, it was a life changing experience. Of course, this occurred before I began writing what you are now reading. It’s like commanding a rocket into the world of words and feeling the traction that comes with a custom fit.
Hope you enjoyed the ride. I did.