I made him cry today

"Hello?"

"Hey Dad!"

"Oh, hi, how are you?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Okay..."

Okay is an improvement. The last few days it's been "not okay" and "not good" when I called.

"What are you doing?" I ask.

He mumbles a bit.

"Waiting for your mother... Gail is with Bobby... I'm working..."

"Where are you?"

"...I'm in the family room... I'm working..."

He mumbles some more.

"How's Melissa? How's her mother?" he inquires.

"She's fine... She had a tough day at the film shoot she's working on. But her mother's good."

"Her mother's good?"

"Yep."

"And her father is good?"

"Yep, everything is good over here... Hey Dad?"

"That's good. That's good to here. Randall and Gail were here yesterday."

"I heard. And it was Gail's birthday, right?"

"That's right, and tomorrow... Aaron comes..."

"RIght..."

Silence.

"Hey Dad? ...I miss you."

Silence. And then with a high pitch tone and a trembling pitch, "Thank you... I appreciate...your sentiments..."

He mumbles some more, weeping on the phone. I stop him.

"Hey Dad? Listen. I...... I can't imagine how tough things are for you.... But I want you to do something. Whenever you're sad, I want you to look forward to talking to me... Whenever you're sad, I want you to think of me out there trying my best to be happy, and that I'm gonna call you everyday to tell you about it on the phone..."

No response. The silence endures.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, I couldn't quite understand. Could you repeat that?"

"........I said that whenever you feel sad, just think of me trying to get my happiness, and that I'm gonna call you everyday."

Silence lingers some more.

"I'm sorry, I don't understand..." He sounds muffled and quick and confused. "Tell your mother..."

"Dad, listen, I'm just saying that I want you to think of me when you're down. And I will call you."

With a whimpering voice, he tells me, "That's not easy..." And then he starts speaking in words that blur together and drip with tears and pain that I can hear running up and down his voice, his lips, every noise he makes. A soft upsetting ramble that surprises me. "....I'm sorry, I'm too upset to continue on the phone..."

"Dad? -"

"Send my regards to Melissa and her family. I'm sorry she had a bad day. I'm glad everything is going okay in Philadelphia -"

"Dad..."

"So I will say goodnight now. I'm sorry I can't talk. I will talk to you later."

"Dad? DAD?..."

"......"

"......"

"......"

The phone clicks off. That silent strong of white noise suddenly blasts into emptiness, and I find myself sitting on a bare mattress in the middle of my half-painted room, alone, before a computer on my desk which sits backwards and unsettled. The red paint on the base board dries all around me. Everything starts to swell up and breathing gets to be a slightly interesting task for me to achieve. I calm myself; this time the breakdown is fully in my control. It's up to me if I melt down or not. I read a text from Melissa. And then I turn to my computer.

Should I tell the internet what happened? Should I paste it up on my blog? I feel like I am doing a disservice to my family. To my father. To spell out my own angst is one thing, but to reiterate a conversation fresh in my mind that won't be subdued by time, replaced by paraphrasing and summarizing? This is criminal. This is using my own condition to attract readers. But I doubt this will attract readers. I just don't think it will. This isn't exploitation. It could be therapeutic. Or simply my loyalty to a practice of self-expression. An exercise. Fresh dialogue. Real. True. With a pulse. And dripping with tears.

So I type. The conversation, I remember, began with his faint "Hello?" And then I tried to sound chipper with a "Hey Dad!" And then he answered back less excited than usual with a "Oh, hi, how are you?" I said "I'm fine. How are you?" He said "Okay." And I recall think that that was an improvement.

He usually says "not okay."

That, or "not good."

Day 8

I wake up, again, at Mel's place. I am the only one here. I have no job except for two free lance gigs. I have friends in the city that I haven't seen much of, or not at all. I've developed a skill that is both unfortunate and accidental of annoying the hell out of my girlfriend that I'm doing my best to suppress. Bad thoughts lurk in the murky waters of my mind like schools of piranhas. Somewhere out there my mother is nervous and unsure (today she is in South Carolina). I have a brother back home from England who thinks I'm prone to irresponsibility and wants my mother to get tougher on me (he thinks painting my room is a waste of time for someone without a job). I have a brother in Los Angeles who probably reads these posts and thinks I'm in need of a good old-fashioned "whip the kid into shape" talk (he more than anyone else sees my insecurities).

And almost 800 miles away, my father is losing hope.

I've applied for jobs. I've begun writing. Now is the time to be persistent.

I think of myself as shrimping. Shrimping is something I've done with my friend Scott on the beaches of Hilton Head outside South Carolina. It involves tossing a net out into a channel of water where the shrimp swim very quickly in crowded teams. You have to make sure the net is cast out in such a way that it makes a circle; if the net makes a half-circle, then it's folded and not effective. Once you cast it out, you let a moment go by for it to sink and then your quickly reel it in, pulling the cords to make the net tighten and flow back, like you're hauling in a jelly fish by the tentacles. Sometimes you catch fish, sometimes you catch crabs, often times hermet crabs. You hope to get dozens of shrimp for you to pick out and snatch up from the sand to toss in a bucket before the local sea gulls swoop in for a steal.

But shrimping is a bad comparison. Shrimping involves giving up quickly, for once you reel the net in, if you don't have any shrimp, you recast the net. But searching for jobs requires persistence. You need to let the net sink, and you need to reinforce the cast and attract the shrimp. Shrimping doesn't work like that. Shrimping involves hitting the right spot at the right time. It's not about attracting shrimp. It's about attacking a spot where they happen to be congregated.

Looking for jobs is a much more sophisticated game, like tiring a bull. No, like picking up a girl. No, maybe not even that. There's an economic science to the art of tracking down a job. You have to anticipate that the employer is busy, and the more persistent you are, the more likely you come into view, but with diminishing effects, because you increase the hazard of annoying the employer.

Today I go to paint, apply for more jobs, and work on my book. My book is about a girl who loses a father and then is faced with a decision between two men, one of whom is the opposite of her father and the other who strangely reminds her of her father. I've written two chapters, and then stopped for a month and a half, and now I am horrified by what I wrote. I need to clean it up. The book begins with a eulogy, a poorly written eulogy. I'm not sure if I like it.

I'm a writer. I want feedback. I want you to tell me how I can improve my writing. I want to be better. I want to be great.

That's what this whole year's about.

Day 7

I woke up at 10:30 at Mel's.

She's off at a film shoot. I'm on my own for the first time since arriving in Philly. Today is a day to be productive.

Two days ago, we bought paint, paint material, and bed sheets for my room. But I can't move into my room until the painting is finished. We started painting two nights ago but for a number of reasons never made it to my place yesterday.

So, here I am.

I'm watching Obama talk about education and I'm impressed. I even open up Real Clear Politics to catch up on the news. I used to frequent the site, but not at all recently.

I have to do laundry and make some phone calls and apply to some jobs and get myself over to the apartment to do some painting.

My friends are wondering where I've been. I've been at Mel's. I'm trying to get this blog going. I'm trying to get the free lance thing going. I'm trying to hoist myself out of so psychological mess that is propagated and also mitigated everyday when I call my dad. I feel responsible, and I am delighted when I hear that my frequent phone calls make him happy. But then he cries and asks me when I'm coming home.

The condition of my father places an enormous burden of awareness on my mind. I am trying to become a writer, and I am constantly seeing images of what I might be like when I'm 78. What will I have accomplished? What will I think of the 22-year-old boy who set off to "do what he loved the most"?

I am contemplating doing laundry now, but I have no quarters. Can somebody get me some quarters?

Yesterday I had one of those sessions where I expose all the low opinions of myself and I realize, once again, the importance of self-love.

MSNBC is discussing the Jersey Shore. The President of the United States mentioned the name Snooky (don't correct me if that's not the spelling) two times, in two different speeches.

I feel better today than I have all week.

Ricky Gervais? He's a funny guy. I think I misspelled his name. I am watching the end of a movie with him and Jennifer Gardner and Rob Lowe. He just called Rob Lowe a sperm donor.

What does the Man in the Sky Want?

Is Ricky Gervais going to replace Steve Carrel when he leaves The Office?

So many questions about this thing called Future. Speaking of which...

The Path Ahead is Complicated

I am haunted.

I see swarms of heavy missiles running toward me. They are feverish. They won’t stop for anything, won’t even pause for air traffic. They cut through clouds. They won’t even flinch against a knockout wind. They have orders, strict orders. And they’re after me.

They follow me everywhere.

My father wore a thin blue pajama suit and a white undershirt and dark socks and black slip-on shoes. He sat oddly on one of the bottom steps of the stairs, his hand quivering near his temple, barely touching the paper-thin skin that seemed to be all that remained to contain the blitz of a mental torment. His face contorted and reddened. His cheeks squeezed into small balls of flesh, the size of crab apples, sweaty and, upon close inspection, layers in running tears.

I kneeled down to talk to him. In the background, Mel stood cautiously and respectfully with two armloads for our road trip. She backed up once she saw that my father and I were speaking.

“Dad, you can talk to me. It’s good to let it out. It’s good to express how you feel.”

Suddenly in a soft whimper, my dad responded, “I try to, but it’s hard… You and your mother are always so busy, and your mother is so hard to get a hold of…”

She doesn’t care, he said.

“Dad, you can call me whenever you want –”

“I did speak to Dr. Cotter the other day. He’s a good friend. He understands what I’m going through…”

A couple moments sprinted past us. Benny, Dad’s caretaker, stood a few feet away, holding a black backpack with Dad’s TPN pouch.

“Dad, I’m here for you. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Your mouth to God’s ears…’”

“You weren’t here for very long. You’ve been so angry at me…”

“I’m not angry with you, Dad…” I took his hand in both of mind and felt his veins as thick as his hand bones, making ripples in his skin.

“Dad, I know you’re scared. I’m scared too… I want you to be brave…”

“It’s not about being brave,” he answered, opening his eyes and wiping them under his glasses. He reached up and grasped the railing of the stairs and began to hoist himself up. “I’ve got enough bravery for ninety people…”

As he rose up, his eyes scanning the upper air, I thought for a second about the peculiarity of the number 90, and if it wasn’t about being brave, what was it about?

I stood up with him and smiled. “Hey Dad, look, you’re taller than me again!”

Benny laughed.

My father stepped down to my level, sinking down below. With his back too sharply bent for him to prove it, he replied, “I’ve always been taller than you.”

He walked past me, signaling to Benny that he wished to move to his office. Benny lifted the heavy backpack with a tube running from the top and through my dad’s undershirt sleeve. And into his arm. Benny remained a mere foot or two behind him.

The three of us entered the yellow light of his small office. I watched painfully as my dad bent that spiny back and leaned backward and fell into his large comfortable cushiony red chair. His vertebrae had been molded into a difficult arc from years of slouching back in that chair. I sat down in his swivel desk chair with my hands cupped together, and listened.

“Everything takes so much time now. It takes me an entire day to do simple things. I’m losing stamina…” And his eyes peered over toward some distant corner of his office, as if the word were suspended in mid-air, fascinating him for that second. “Stamina…” he repeated.

Silence carried the word around the room, and finally to drift resolutely through my mind like a log in an endless body of water, gliding forth because someone long ago gave it a push. My father’s eyes were wide open now.

“Hey Dad,” I started, trying to lighten the discussion. “Mel and I are going to a baseball game.”

“Is that so? Which one?”

“The Phillies.”

“When?”

“When we get to Philadelphia. Tomorrow.”

“Who do they play?”

I called out to Mel. After a moment, I heard her quickly walk over so she could hear us from outside the office, near the front door. I asked her who the Phillies playing. She did not know.

After a moment, my dad became silent again and then somber.

“Dad, I’m going to see you again. I’ll be back in a couple weeks.”

His despair muted him. He tried to etch a response, but he seemed to change his mind, the way his face suddenly cleared up and he looked at me, self-aware of his emotions, and started asking questions about the road trip from Chicago to Philly.

When it was time to go, he again walked over to the front door, with Benny right next to him. “Do you have the chocolates?” he asked alarmingly.

“Yep, right here.” I took out a small bag of Hershey’s kisses closed up in a rubber band. He nodded, content and satisfied. Then his face tightened up again as he reached over to embrace me once more.

“I love you Dad.”

He sniffed and said, “I love you too.”

When we made our way to the car, I had to shove a storm of awakened tears back down my throat and into my chest to make my heart beat wildly. He took small steps across the lot in front of our house toward the mailbox with Benny right behind him. After checking it, he crossed back over to the house. He waved at me again, and I again said goodbye. I did not close my car door until the last of him had passed out of sight back into the house. And he did, leaving a chilly emptiness to swell in my mind, as I saw in a way a world with my father departed from my view in a much grander way.

Mel and I closed our doors. I held her in my arms for a second to digest the sorrow. And then I started my car, and we left.

Thornwood passes out of sight. My new home, my new reality, comes into view under thick overcast and rain. Somewhere over those formidable clouds, a fleet of missiles is on their way. Groomed to do just this. Engineered to destroy me. Or perhaps to haunt me. Action at a distance.

They’re coming after me. With great, terrible stamina.

Passing through a Forest

Thornwood Lane can always remember me as an explorer. I recall years of my childhood investigating the forest grounds, my house passing in and out of view through the vertical blinds of tree trunks – thin ones and thick ones. I would search for signs of human contact, maybe a tossed out empty bottle from years back or a dropped package of mints, or just a piece of litter.

And sometimes I would find the skeletal remains of a forest dweller.

And sometimes I would find old molten rock.

All the time, I see myself nudging away from those fresher days. I jam my oar into the heavy sandy bank of my childhood, pushing my rowboat off into the greater depths of the later years. I think about those times when playing pretend games was admissible. Today, the game is getting to be like some horrible crime against my own honest self-awareness. It’s an honest self-awareness that recognizes that I am only a twenty-two year old boy riddled with issues and amounting to, as always, just another speck in the grander scheme of stuff – physical and/or otherwise.

But people always marvel over how “insignificant” we are simply because the universe is much bigger than the world we inhabit, which itself is so much larger than any single human being. But there are two problems with this idea. First of all, what does size have to do with significance? The universe began at a size much smaller than a human being. Matter is composed of crucial microscopic material. And this atomic and subatomic sized material is precisely the second point. We might be exponentially smaller than the universe, but we are also exponentially larger than the quarks comprising the universe. Why do we forget so often about the tiny bits of existence that would gawk at us with amazement if they were conscious? And maybe they are conscious. Maybe aliens the size of strings that run smaller than any subatomic particle are staring at me with wide eyes and mouths ajar as I stand before them in a forest of massive trees swaying in a powerful gusty wind, and I play chicken with a deer that for the first time in her life won’t run away when the twenty-two year old idiot that is me thumping my feet and flailing my arms and sounding a silly playful barbaric yawp.

Why can’t we be in the middle of the road? Why can’t we get over the fact that not being the biggest does not mean being the smallest?

Just remember that the universe could be staring at us the way we stare helplessly at a single coarse line of thread that just won’t slip into the tiny hole at the end of a needle. Our fingers are much too bulky and clumsy to understand the world of a needle.

And this. This is all passing.

A Few Feet Back

Her eyes were silken dark gems.

And her caramel-colored fur looked soft like velvet.

She seemed quite peaceful, standing elegantly over the grass. Her muzzle concealed the rows of small teeth she used to crush my mother’s red and blue flowers, which sat in a perfect circle around a maple tree in our backyard.

When I trotted across the green, my white shoes thumping down on the ground and my arms flailing in the air, she immediately took refuge in the forest crowding the edge of the open yard. But then she stopped, and I stampeded past the threshold and onto the shore of woodchips, and further on into the dimness of the woods. I came to a severe halt; it’s in my head now that I’m some warrior, some loyal guard pledged to the holy mission of protecting my mother’s yard work. And I stood there as if this doe were some familiar enemy of mine, the kind you get to know so well you can almost call her your friend. You can almost invite her to family events. You know she sees your weakness, and you know that she knows that you know all of hers.

I made this ridiculous yawping noise like I’m entertaining a child. She blinked indifferently. She then turned and looked right at me, raising her head high into the air to allow her lengthy neck with the white fur running below her mouth down toward her belly to glow.

I think she was trying to face her fear, the way she seemed to harden her stance, turning her body into sturdy ice. I stiffened my knees and waited. We both waited, out there in the muggy late summer afternoon.

We both glanced around, as if each of us had strategically planned a team of allies to pounce upon the other from behind or from the side. But then she turned back to me again.

I waited some more. And then I yelped and shouted and jumped. And then I took a few quick and resolute steps forward, stopping maybe ten yards away but shunned off by the villainous throngs of unfamiliar green plants spiking out of the ground between us. (They could be poison ivy.)

So I stood there. And I yelled out one more time. But the deer would not move. Not at all. Instead, she postures herself directly toward me. She looked to be leaning forward just a bit, just enough.

What do I do now? I wondered.

And then with great effort she raised up her right front leg, never breaking eye contact with those silky gems… And then she slammed her hoof into the ground, sending me a few feet back.