A Work Progressing

Is it a road? Is it a journey? Is it ambition? Is it the long ball struck cleanly with a three wood, rising against a blue sky? 

My father says, ‘Hey, let’s go for a drive!’ What that really means is ‘Let’s journey’ It’s 2;30 in the afternoon, no suitcases, so it can’t be far, but it might mean dinner at a restaurant before coming home. That means restaurants near the destination. Everything will flow from the first few blocks of driving the car. Technically we have the four cardinal points And everything between. Each turn he takes eliminates choices, but the turn do not define exactness.

After three blocks we are going west to the bay. No more than thirty minutes away, could be the old fishing grounds near the Butler plant, or perhaps under the Bridge. Maybe the Naval Station and the ruins of the Whaling Plant.

We pass the Butler turn off, the choices narrow. We slowly pass the Bridge, so we are heading to the Naval Station, we went through and the road dead ends at the Whaling Plant.

This is where my father changed everything. He made a sharp right turn on a very bad road that climbed the ridge. At the top it wandered a bit before it descended to the Point San Pablo Yacht Harbor. We walked about looking at boats and houseboats. My father told me about John Wayne making a movie here. It was winter, a warm day, but the sun was setting.

And the harbor had a restaurant.

That was the past…

I finally had a chance of a full-time job. As a student I had my share of seasonal work. Seasons are not always based upon the tilt of the earth, there are seasons of production, seasons of selling, and seasons of travel. I explored most of them.

Now I was locked into being a staff member at a college, with seasons of semesters. I suppose I could have treated it like the other jobs, a way station while heading to somewhere else. I didn’t. I liked it here, but I didn’t like the job I was hired to do.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the degree, training, or experience for the other jobs. So I had to develop a ‘drive’. It had not been something that I did normally. Not in school, not in factory jobs, and not even in the military.

I knew the ‘proper’ drive was to get certified for the areas I was interested. I thought perhaps that my drive might skip that part.

Strangely enough it did. For the next five positions, I obtained them without the standard qualifications. I just did the work. And when I found a position that required a four year degree, I made it work with 1.5 years. I was driven, with a 50 hour work week.

I did that for thirty years.

My father-in-law was a golfer. Yes he had an official job, but that was only to provide for his golfing.

He also had a son, slightly older than Sherry, so he had a partner. But he living states away from his condo surrounded by his 18 hole course. He looked to me, ‘Do you golf?’. ‘I play racquet ball. Golf can’t be that hard.’ , I replied.

That started months of the driving range work, short game putting green work. Finally I was ready. I was deadly with a two wood. Even more deadly with a three wood. I didn’t have to try very hard, I had a natural slice to right. So intense that most I landed in the adjacent hole, scattering the golfers there.

In compensation I did have a fiat long 2 iron, but my most accurate was a 7 iron. I could hop skip and jump to the hole it five drives. Maybe then a two putt?

My father-in-law never asked me to play on his course again. To many friends on his course, too many potential friendly deaths. We did go to several courses nearby, where we were strangers. I left my drivers at home and used irons to get close to par.

No.

This is about something found loose in a drawer. A hard drive.

It is an assembly in Thailand, made of parts that have parts that have parts.

Beneath the aluminum cover are platters. Upon the platters are magnetic domains. Within the domains are patterns.

Within the patterns are photographs, letters, accounts, arguments, dreams, and shopping lists.

Somewhere in that hierarchy is a younger version of me, waiting patiently in a folder.

Maybe something written about my father, some secret roads in the Sierras.

Maybe something written about the transition from military to civilian, something about the two divorces in marriage, and the lack of direction.

I hope there is not a treatise on facing the little dimpled ball. So easy to hit, so easy to drive.

I need to power it up. I need to see I different me responding to life back then.

Will I accept the spark and whine of a dying drive?

Utah can be a desolate country. Miles of desert in every direction. Not lifeless, but not life that is recognizable to inhabitants of either continental coast. It is best approached on foot, allowing the change to overwhelm you slowly.

Long before I arrived, Utes and Paiutes knew these lands. They followed water, shade, and seasons where others saw only emptiness. Later came wagons, horses, and men carrying maps. Most passed through. Some stayed.

The desert remained.

Then roads appeared. Steel, rubber, and engines began crossing country once measured in footsteps.

I was born into that change.

A 1947 Willys Jeep Station Wagon. All steel. Two doors in front, two more for passengers, and a rear hatch for whatever needed carrying. 

Veterans trusted my cousins. Farmers trusted my mechanics. I was built to work, and Utah always seemed to have work waiting.

I was formed by pieces, each with their own responsibility, each with their own unique characteristics.

Tires connected us to the earth, most times with warm asphalt, cracked, but mostly smooth. Sometimes the raw rock weathered away to sand, again, warm but yielding. We were lighter than most vehicles, and rarely sank to our hubcaps, which disappeared after a few years.

The earth connection felt right, it kept our speed lower, more sure of our progress. The frame was still rigid, but the ever present rust had thinned the steel in parts. Several places in the floorboards had ‘windows’ to the ground.

The protective paint on the outside had also thinned, making a ‘mottled skin’, more like a reptile, instead of a city car. On the surface, the rust wasn’t hidden, and human hands kept it at bay.

We knew human hands. They came with the original parts that formed us. They came with replacement parts that kept us moving. We sometimes wondered how that happened, accident? Misuse? Or simply age?

A human hand turned the key that allowed the battery to connect. It sat there waiting to be asked, slowly draining its charge. Then suddenly it felt the surge it the generator and all was well.

Human hands gripped the steering wheel, there was movement, some backwards, mostly forwards. Air flowed around the body, hit the flat forward surfaces like a blast furnace, yet flowed through the radiator parts, cooling the water in the engine.

Friction reigned supreme through all of our parts. Wear was met with oil in the crucial connections. Oil seeped through gaskets, coating the steel in black sticky clumps.

In other places the oil was absent, springs creaked, the large ones near the wheels, the small ones in the hood clamps. Movement made noise, even when the engine was turned off.

We are a collection of parts, and parts have parts, yet we are also one object in motion. Some feel the heat, some feel the weight, and some feel the wind. None of us know where we are going.

A human came and things changed again. If our radio could also hear, we would know that the human wanted to take us out of Utah, out of the desert. The human no longer wanted to hitch hike, he wanted to ride in a vehicle as the driver, not the passenger as a favor.

More changes were made, shiny brake pads disappeared, old oil replaced with new, timing was adjusted, windows were cleaned. And early one morning the tires were turning.

We knew that the tires were not perfectly round. Sitting so long waiting, they had formed a flat spot. The heat of the desert, the heat of the road, and the weird rhythm of rotating tires mellowed.

Late afternoon sun from the front meant that we were headed west, the Bonneville Salt Flats in our future.

A day time crossing was possible in something newer with fresh parts. We needed the cool of the night to keep all of our parts together.

There were limitations, the tires were not aligned and serious shimmy occurred over fifty miles an hour.  That meant vehicles coming from behind had to pass us, making a terrible vortex of wind, sound, and light. But traffic was less at night.

The more difficult thing was the oncoming traffic that was going east. It was pushing air and sound directly into our path. It was like being shoved to the ground every two or three minutes.

The springs of the hood clamps screamed with metal abuse, as the ‘shove’ forced air under the hood, trying to flip it up to smash the wind screen.

There was a collective understanding that this needed to stop. But key was still on, the engine still turned, and the tires grabbed asphalt.

The Salt Flats were behind us, but the long grade up to Nevada was ahead. I don’t remember a meeting, or even an agreed consensus. But all of us heard a slight ‘knock’ from the engine. The third piston from the front had developed a ‘wobble’. Perhaps a ring, or a joint, but some part of a part was failing. We all could sense it.

The human could hear it too. He stopped to add thicker oil. The climb was still there, and the knock continued. The human changed the speed, in increased the passing from the rear and the front. It became a ‘perfect storm’!

At the top of the grade, near Wells, a push rod went sideways through the engine block. The third cylinder was broken. The engine stopped, the Jeep continued on in silence, most of the parts perfectly willing to do the job. Gravity won and the tires slowed, the human used the last of the rotation to steer off the road, the passing vehicles still causing havoc, but less so.

For the very few brief moments, it was black and very quiet. Then came the fainter ‘shove’, light, and rattle. It went on for awhile.

The Jeep engine took pride in the fact that bullets could disable a piston, but if the piston was then disconnected, the engine would still run, oscillating slightly, but run.

The human had few tools, and none for the piston.

The human could not stay, he was still moving west, but he left the Jeep by the side of the road, outside of Wells, Nevada. He left a note.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve left the Jeep. I suspect it never wanted the cold damp West coast. Be careful towing, most of the parts are useful. It did well in the Salt Flats.”

It all starts in Indianapolis, the Taggart Baking Company in 1921 was preparing to launch a new loaf of bread. They announced in newspaper ads:

“A Wonder is Coming.”

Elmer Cline, president of Taggert Baking, had attended the International Balloon Race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Hundreds of brightly colored hot-air balloons filled the sky. Looking up, he reportedly said he was filled with ‘wonder’. 

That became the bread’s name, and the red, yellow, and blue balloons became its enduring logo.  

For a few years, Wonder Bread was simply another loaf. Then, the Continental Baking Company purchased Taggert in 1925. They introduced a new featured, pre-sliced bread. By 1930 it was being sold nationally as sliced bread, one of the first brands to do so. At first, most customers worried sliced bread would dry out, so the company had to persuade people that convenience wouldn’t sacrifice freshness.  

During the 1940s, in general, white bread was enriched with vitamins and minerals as part of a government effort to combat nutritional deficiencies. Wonder Bread leaned into this, advertising:

“Wonder Bread builds strong bodies…”

The slogan changed over the years from “8 ways” to “12 ways,” referring to the added nutrients rather than some mysterious power hidden in the loaf.  

As American tastes changed in the late twentieth century toward whole grains, sourdoughs, and artisan breads, Wonder Bread became almost a symbol of industrial food—soft, white, uniform, and nostalgic all at once. 

After the collapse of Hostess Brands in 2012, the brand disappeared briefly before being purchased by Flowers Foods and returned to store shelves in 2013.  

The bread’s name comes from the oldest meaning of wonder—not curiosity, but astonished delight. 

The classic- “I wonder…” meant I have a question, wonder meant I have encountered something so beautiful or unexpected that words fail.

The executives weren’t wondering about the balloons.

They were standing in wonder beneath them.

Applying ‘wonder’ as a name for the bread wasn’t connected to anything the bread offered at the time. It was a celebration of the concept, the wrapper was closer to the real meaning of the word.

I’m sure that the ‘sliced’ feature, and the fresh texture leaned into a new ‘wonder’. But there was a price. Less natural nutrition, boosted by artificial vitamins. Science ‘improving’ our lives. Reducing ‘Wonder’ to a brand.

Time to rescue the word…

Morning

It’s still dark, the blush of dawn minutes away, and I sit in my chair looking at the window, trying to see the change.

The earth is spinning towards the light, and we use this to mark a new day. It may be a negotiation, but it’s useful, it works. It’s not as abrupt as a light switch in a room, but we treat it as such. 

Yet now, as I look up periodically, I see the change, I mark the spin, my time slows down. There is a raw quiet, just before the birds are awake. Stillness in the branches…

Curiously, there is a band of longitude, just a few miles east of where I am now, that is radically different. It is later in the morning, actual sunshine, movement on the land. People meeting agendas, doors opening/closing, communication, actions initiated. They say it is just the time distance. It isn’t, it’s the rotation that makes the time.

The morning doesn’t come to us, we turn towards the morning.

There is a fence. It runs across a field that stretches farther than the eye can follow—a thin line drawn across an expanse that does not ask to be divided. It is not a forever fence. Its reach is finite, and its limit is marked by the last post.

At first glance, that post is unremarkable. Same material as the others. Weathered by the same seasons. Painted or unpainted according to the same forgotten decisions. The wire grips it with the same insistence. It stands in line, part of the structure, part of the intention.

But its balance is different.

Every other post is held in place by equal tension on both sides—a quiet equilibrium. The last post feels a singular pull, backward, toward the long line behind it. The strain gathers at its top, a reminder that this is where the fence stops insisting on itself. Only the first post, miles away, knows a similar asymmetry.

From its position, the last post sees the field differently. It sees the land not as two halves but as one continuous sweep of earth. The backward pull at its crown is met by the forward push of the soil around its buried base—a counterforce that keeps it upright even as the fence’s purpose thins to a whisper.

If the ground is firm, the post stands straight, indistinguishable from the others. We rarely notice the difference in stress. We assume it divides the field because the fence tells us it does.

But the field was never divided.

When I reach the last post, I do not discover a new field. I discover the old one, revealed. The post remains, the wire remains, the distinction remains—but something in the observer shifts. The fence no longer appears to split the world; it simply marks the limit of a particular idea.

The first post established a boundary. Distance and time reveal its reach. The fence was never infinite; it only felt that way from the middle.

Beyond the last post lies no rebellion, no triumph, no loss. No dramatic crossing, no sudden liberation, no fanfare. Only the quiet recognition that reality extends farther than the structures we use to describe it.

The field continues.

My father never took me to Disneyland. It was new then, and reasonably priced, but it was south, deep in the middle of the LA basin — not a place where my father was comfortable. I understood that, and really didn’t expect it.

My best friend’s father once took his family to Yosemite National Park and came back with a small tabletop clock featuring a black bear and a brass plaque with the word Yosemite on it. I had never heard of the place, and I read it as “Yose-might.”

We never went there either. It was still sort of southeast, and too crowded. My father liked open space.

Not all families are structured the same way, but I think there has been a general shift over time. In one style, the adults do what they want, and the children are invited along. At the other extreme, the family revolves around the children’s activities, while the parents watch from the sidelines.

I was raised mostly in the former, and raised my own kids mostly in the latter.

When I think about my father, I remember a man who had once been a standout athlete — boxing, football, baseball. A college ticket that never got punched because of the Depression.

By the time I came along, the last born in the family, he was older. He had become a fisherman, a car camper, and a bowler. And as a child, I was invited into all of those worlds.

From age four to twelve, my father bowled in leagues at different local bowling alleys. For many of those years, it was three different leagues: Wednesday night, Friday night, and Saturday night. At four years old, I took naps to the sound of bowling pins crashing.

As I got older, I explored the alleys themselves, each one vastly different, built in different decades. The oldest had a pool hall on the second floor. The newest had a game room dedicated to pinball machines, and an actual restaurant. The middle-aged ones carried that familiar 1950s look — automatic pinsetters beneath classic overhead transparencies.

The Richmond Bowl was my favorite, and the oldest of them all. It still had a half-dozen teenagers at the back of the alley manually setting pins, my older brother among them.

I still remember the smoke, the talk, and the crack of billiard balls.

Sometimes I would forget where my mother was sitting. I learned not to look for her. It was easier to look for my father.

There could be thirty lanes, all full, with two to four bowlers on each lane, but I only watched for one man.

A six-foot-tall man standing at the ready line, the ball held at his chest. As he stepped forward, the ball would rise above his head in both hands. No other bowler did that.

Another step, and the ball dropped into a full three-quarter backswing. Another step into a forward swing an inch above the floor. A slight twist and release sent the ball in a left-arching curve toward the pocket behind the first pin.

Then chaos.

That was my father.

And my mother watching nearby.

He rolled more than a few 300 games during his years in the leagues. But he was especially proud of the “Eleven in a Row” plaque he kept on the wall.

It was a small silver plaque, about the size of a credit card, engraved with his name, the date, and a scoring graphic showing eleven strikes and a spare.

The odd thing was that the first frame had been the spare. The next eleven shots were all strikes.

He never could be perfect at the game, but he could finish perfectly, without choking.

I have that plaque now, along with the 1947–48 championship bowling ring that I wear every day.

I rarely bowl.

I don’t need to.

Here is the scenario.

 

A young boy, quiet, observant, forced even more so by his younger brother, who is the exact opposite. René is a cyclone, ripping through life, uprooting trees, sucking the oxygen out of rooms, leaving people to collect the debris of his passing.

 

Gaston sees this as his older brother, not able to control or even direct his brother’s path. From his earliest years of watching over his brother, it was advanced training in witnessing.

 

There are children who learn to speak. There are children who learn to fight. There are children who learn to disappear. Gaston learned to watch.

 

He learned to read the expressions of adults after René had left the room. He learned to spot trouble while it was still only a wrinkle in a forehead. He learned that storms announce themselves long before the first rain.

 

A slammed door. A broken vase. The sudden silence after laughter.

 

Most people looked at René. Gaston looked at what René had changed.

 

Gaston stumbles upon Van Gogh in the fields of Auvers.

 

Because everything Gaston has witnessed before has been readable. René’s damage, the adults’ reactions, trouble arriving in foreheads before it arrives in rooms. His gift is precisely that he can decode what he sees. He has never been in the presence of something that defeats decoding.

 

Genius doesn’t behave like other things. It doesn’t announce itself through the usual signals. There’s no wrinkle in the forehead to read, no aftermath to collect. It simply is, at full intensity, indifferent to being witnessed.

 

For the first time in his life, Gaston is the one who doesn’t know where to look.

 

Or rather — he knows exactly where to look. He cannot look away. But looking doesn’t resolve into understanding, and that has never happened to him before.

 

What he sees first might matter here. Not the man. Not the canvas.

 

The way the man moves.

 

Vincent working wasn’t still. But it also wasn’t René’s chaos. It was something Gaston had no category for — motion that was entirely purposeful and entirely consuming at the same time. No waste. No performance. No awareness of being seen.

 

Gaston had spent his life watching people who didn’t know they were being watched. He had never watched someone who simply couldn’t care whether they were watched or not.

 

It took Gaston several visits to understand what unsettled him.

 

It wasn’t the paintings. It wasn’t even the man. It was the direction of the man’s attention.

 

Most people looked at other people. René looked at audiences. Adults looked at consequences. Teachers looked at behavior. Parents looked at children.

 

Everyone seemed to spend their lives looking sideways at one another. Vincent did not.

 

When he stood before a field, he looked at the field. When he looked at a tree, he looked at the tree. Not as a symbol. Not as a lesson. Not as a possession.

 

As though it deserved to be seen for itself.

 

Gaston had never witnessed such concentration. It felt almost impolite. As if the painter had forgotten the existence of the rest of humanity.

 

Yet there was no arrogance in it. Only devotion.

 

After a time, Vincent realizes what is happening. At first, it was just a curious local boy with a boisterous younger brother, but now, an old desire reforms. The ‘search for agreement’.

 

Not by words, or by action, Vincent becomes aware of being witnessed. 

 

Gaston has spent his life reading people who don’t know they’re being watched. Now the subject turns.

 

Vincent becomes aware. Not through anything Gaston says. Not through anything Gaston does.

 

The watcher becomes visible to the watched.

 

Not a glance. Not a word. Something slower. A change in the quality of the air. The way attention acquires weight when it is genuine.

 

For years Gaston had watched storms. Now, for the first time, he encounters someone who can feel the weather changing.

 

It is unsettling and thrilling at the same time. A chance to absorb what Vincent has witnessed. To see, then use the same language to know. A youth taking on the experiences of a genius.

 

There may have been long discussions, there may have been only the sharing of images. Gaston was changed forever, grateful forever, his future no longer uncertain. It was still unknown but not void.

 

Almost immediately the cyclone returned, dressed in cowboy gear, spinning, wheeling, darting between them. A cowboy’s gun shot. A wound in the stomach.

 

Vincent crumbled to the ground.

 

Gaston would spend the rest of his life replaying that instant, not because he understood it, but because he didn’t. The witness who could decode storms found himself standing before weather without a language. 

 

History tells us Vincent was disturbed, he cut off one ear to give to a whore, he painted like a madman, he committed suicide in Auvers.

 

Gaston never speaks about what he witnessed. He grows older, he may have performed in cafes as he got older, singing paintings of color and hope.

 

I hope he searched for agreement and passed it on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Looking at a Field

(If Gaston had written something)

 

You must understand: I came to the field with old eyes.

 

Old eyes look for what will happen next. They scan for the wrinkle in the forehead that means trouble. They measure the distance to the nearest door. They count the seconds between laughter and the slam that follows.

 

Old eyes are never in the field. They are already in the future, cleaning up the mess.

 

 

Vincent did not have old eyes.

 

When he stood before the wheat, he stood in it. Not as a man who owns it, not as a man who fears it, not as a man who will paint it for money or fame. He stood as though the field had asked him to come, and he had arrived, and that was all that was required.

 

Here is what he taught me—and I write it down now so that I do not forget, and so that you might not need a cyclone to learn it.

 

 

First: Stop counting.

 

Do not count the stalks. Do not count the crows. Do not count the hours until supper or the days until winter. Numbers are the language of aftermath—they keep a ledger of what has passed. The field is not a ledger. The field is now. Stand in it until your mind runs out of arithmetic.

 

 

Second: Let the field look at you.

This is the hardest part. You believe you are the witness. You believe your eyes do the work. But Vincent did not take the field with his eyes—he received it. He allowed the yellow to enter him. He allowed the wind to move through his chest. He became the surface that the light touched.

 

 

Try it. Stand still. Do not name what you see. Do not say wheat or sky or tree. Let the seeing happen without the naming. You will feel a strange panic—the same panic I felt, the panic of the watcher who has nothing to decode. Sit in that panic. It will pass. And when it passes, the field will still be there, indifferent to your panic, grateful for your presence.

 

 

 

Third: Forget the painter.

 

Do not imagine Vincent. Do not imagine his ear, his madness, his death. These are stories that people tell to make themselves feel wise. They are aftermath. The field does not care about stories. If you think of Vincent while you look, you are looking at him, not at the wheat. Let him go. He would want you to let him go. He looked at fields so that you might look at fields, not so that you might look at him looking.

 

Fourth: Stay until the direction changes.

 

Most people arrive, glance, and leave. They have seen the field. But seeing is not witnessing. Witnessing takes time—the time it takes for your attention to acquire weight. Vincent knew this. He stood for hours, not because he was slow, but because he was waiting for the field to become real to him, not just visible.

 

You will know you have stayed long enough when you forget that you are standing. You will know you have stayed long enough when the field no longer seems separate from you. You will know you have stayed long enough when you feel a kind of tenderness toward the bent stalks, a tenderness that asks for nothing in return.

 

 

Fifth: Carry nothing away.

 

This is the final lesson, and the most difficult. When you leave the field, leave it intact. Do not take a memory to polish. Do not take a lesson to teach. Do not take a feeling to treasure. The field is not yours to own.

 

Vincent painted the fields, yes. But he did not paint them to capture them. He painted them to return them—to give them back to the world, more visible than before. When you leave, leave the field more visible than you found it. That is the only thing you owe.

 

I spent my childhood watching storms. I learned to read every sign. I could tell you when René would strike, when adults would break, when silence would turn to shouting. I was proud of this. I thought it was wisdom. It was only fear, well-dressed.

 

Vincent gave me something I did not know I lacked: a reason to look that was not fear. He looked because the field deserved to be seen. Not because it threatened him. Not because it promised him anything. Simply because it was there, and he was there, and that was enough.

 

When I sing now, in the cafés, I do not sing about Vincent. I sing about the yellow that entered me. I sing about the wind that moved through my chest. I sing about the moment I stopped counting, and the field looked back, and I was not afraid.

 

That is the booklet. That is all it contains. Now go to the field. Stay until you forget your name.

 

Let the wheat have the last word.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re strange creatures.

We walk through the world collecting impressions, and then we freeze them in language as if they were specimens. A moment becomes a sentence. A feeling becomes a fact. A passing shadow becomes a story we swear is true.

And because we can do this, we can also do the opposite.

We can write things into existence that never were.

I can say, “God lies,” and the sentence sits there, perfectly formed, perfectly false.

I can say, “This is hopeless,” and suddenly the air gets heavier. Yet hopelessness is rarely a fact. More often it is a conclusion. The future has not arrived, but we pronounce judgment on it anyway.

Much of what troubles us is not reality itself, but the stories we construct around reality. We imagine outcomes. We assume motives. We predict disasters. Then we react to those inventions with the seriousness of soldiers responding to alarms.

Discernment shouldn’t be this hard, but here we are.

So what do we do?

We build our own list. A small compass. A way to keep from creating worlds that don’t deserve to exist.

1. Every challenge hides a seed of hope.
2. Is it true, or is it just my opinion wearing a costume?
3. What evidence is actually in front of me?
4. Is this knowable, or am I borrowing someone else’s certainty?
5. Choose truth over ego.
6. Practice noticing when you’re open and when you’re closed.
7. Hold a positive posture; the world already produces enough entropy.
8. Even the immoral can choose good.
9. Don’t wait for perfection.
10. It’s not about me.
11. Learn to yield.

The list itself is not the point.

The point is to remember that words are tools, not masters. They can reveal reality, but they can also conceal it. They can clarify, distort, encourage, deceive, heal, or divide.

Before adding another sentence to the world, it may be worth asking:

Am I describing reality?

Or am I creating it?

The afternoon sun beat down upon the herd, the late summer wind had died, leaving a mist of evaporated water low to the ground. The stillness saturated the ground, the field of grass, the herd of cattle. Not even the insects made a noise.

The cattle’s skin still shivered automatically, but not because of bites. They shivered because they always had. The farmer’s teenage daughter had given names to nearly all in the herd, particularly those with unusual markings.

For the next few weeks it was the best of times. There was no awareness of the coming process. Even the daughter pushed the knowledge to the edge of knowledge. At the season’s end there was butchering.

It’s such an ugly term for something natural and important. Cattle were meant for food and leather, and the region excelled in industries that needed to be supplied. High-quality leather from Veneto was used in furniture, automobiles, and shoes.

Italian beef was popular in traditional restaurants, served with pasta and vegetables. Hundreds of unique dishes, prepared by specially trained chefs, delighted natives and tourists.

The herd made it all happen.

On one morning, near the onset of winter, something lingered. A hide had been scraped, soaked in tanning solution, and stretched on a rack. The skin had millions of cells embedded within it that had once functioned as nerve sensors. No longer active, but still there in stasis.

Perhaps in the frozen DNA there was a memory of having a name, another memory of shivering in unison, wave after wave of automatic motion. But now there was only the loss of the sun and the smell of chemistry.

The hide was removed from the frame, then cut carefully into patterned shapes. Artisans came in from the cold and damp to spend days indoors assembling shapes into new objects. Objects to extend the use of the herd. It was a season of making.

There was a shaping, a forming. A pattern was sewn together, soaked, placed on a form, and pressed into shape. More stitching, more forming. Additional material that smelled of rubber was applied, glued, and sewn.

In the end, after hours of real work, it was a shoe.

Paired with another, the shoe was placed in a box, never exposed to sunshine, then placed on racks for spring shipment to regional and international distributors. Mountain boots crafted in the shadow of the Italian Alps and made from Italian leather was the perfect marketing plan.

In Berkeley, California, there was a ski shop on University Avenue that had expanded its inventory to include hiking gear. They had a new line of Pivetta Eigers, a simple leather hiking boot.

It didn’t have special hooks or buckles. It just had holes. It didn’t have a wide welt for the sole. In fact, it had no visible welt at all. It was constructed in such a way that the foot was directly above the edge of the sole.

This meant that when the boot hit the earth it was almost perfectly the same size as the foot. It also meant that the boot was perfect for the edges encountered while climbing cliff faces. It was slightly heavy, but rigid, with great ankle protection in scree.

A veteran backpacker had finally gotten a seasonal job that allowed for some discretionary spending. The boots were an entire week’s pay.

He bought them with a shrug.

The hiker had tried the boots on in the shop, but the real test would be a short hike in North Berkeley at Indian Rock Park. This well-known free-climbing rock sat in the middle of a residential area. The rock was the size of several buildings, both high and wide. It provided difficult climbs and magnificent views of the East Bay, San Francisco, and the waters in between.

The hiker went there directly after purchasing them and laced up the boots.

The leather creaked. The laces tightened. He stood.

For the first time since the hide had left the pasture, sunlight touched it again.

The warmth spread slowly through the leather.

If anything remained, it might have remembered the sun.

Years passed. The shoe experienced cold mountain streams, snow-covered trails, and Army parade grounds. It followed the hiker, providing support and steadfastness.

One day, after years in the mountains and years in the military, the hiker was applying fresh protection to the leather.

There was nothing ceremonial about it. No audience. No speech.

He simply honored the shoe.

The ‘what’ of a shoe had become a ‘who’.

Revenge

I’ve written before about the comforting noises at night in my old house. I learned them through decades of being up late, listening to wallboard crack in response to the pressures of a moving hillside. Unsettling, literally, yet soothing in their regularity.

One night there was a difference. On the eve of the release of the movie Disclosure Day, I feel compelled to write of my personal visitation.

It wasn’t a dark and stormy night. It was a regular night with just a taste of too much noise coming from the entryway of our split-level house. A half flight of stairs down from my chair was the front door. Was it locked? Generally, it was locked when we were home and unlocked when we were away. But was it locked now?

I slowly rose from the chair, hands gripping my knees for stability, but also to help silence any joint snapping. I straightened to full height and slid my feet slowly over the carpet, careful not to cause any floorboards to creak.

I got to the banister and looked over, searching for any movement. I had my 5.5-inch folding tanto in my hands, being careful to silence the snick of the locking mechanism. I gripped the banister hard as I leaned in to see if anyone had gone down the next half flight of stairs toward the garage.

Then I heard, and saw, a crouching movement at the end of the stairs directly to my left.

Only ten feet away.

Instinctively, I shouted, “Freeze!”

And it did.

I couldn’t gather enough light to determine which direction the crouched figure faced. I could only make out what might have been the central mass. The command to freeze was apparently in full effect, which left me confused about what I should do next.

I wasn’t going to get closer, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the still shape, straining to detect movement. I quietly shifted the knife into a blade grip.

Seconds passed.

No change.

I didn’t want to make a sound because if I was having this much difficulty seeing, then surely it was universal.

More seconds passed.

I moved slightly, positioning myself behind part of the wall while remaining riveted on the dark mass.

I said loudly, “Stand up now and move out the door!”

I waited.

No change.

I repeated the order.

Still no change.

“This is your last warning!”

I thought something moved.

Then nothing.

Maybe nothing had moved at all.

I made a decision.

I stepped forward and threw as hard as I could at the center mass.

I heard the distinctive sound of a clean stick.

There was movement.

For several seconds it was slow. The mass never rose. It stayed close to the floor and appeared to move to the carpeted stairs, coming up one stair at a time. As it got closer I could resolve the arms of my leather jacket reaching up for the next step.

I had nothing more to throw, I was now ‘frozen’ to the image pulling itself up to where I crouched. I had missed my throw.

Halfway up the stairs I could see the empty cuffs of my jacket reaching the next step, it seemed to increase speed, or perhaps it was just time compressing.

Very soon it was upon me, covering me with an unnatural weight. The cuffs were at my neck, as if hands were choking the life out of me. I was staring at the label sewn into the collar of the jacket, ‘Authentic St. John’s Bay, Established 1984’

The lights came on, and Sherry asked, ‘It’s 2:30 am, what are you doing?’

‘Putting my jacket away!’