Nathaniel Sewell's Blog, page 22

Orlando – The City Beautiful

It seems appropriate, standing here in Houston, binge watching the news, that it is raining. Because, I’m sad.

As a younger man from when my thick hair was naturally dark brown, I lived in Orlando for a decade of my life. I managed the state for a large medical malpractice insurance carrier. I have been in almost every ‘nook and cranny’ in Florida. I do love Florida, almost as much as I love Kentucky.

I met my wife in Winter Park, at Dexter’s, not far from downtown Orlando, it was a blind date. I was a rather driven character, so was she. We still are. We have many happy memories from our time in Orlando.

We would both tell you, if you get away from the ‘attractions’, we think you’ll find Orlando really is ‘The City Beautiful’. It is a lovely town, full of palm trees, terrible traffic, and lots, and lots of wonderful human beings. Human beings with hopes and dreams who might happen to be living an ‘alternative lifestyle’. I think that’s an absurd characterization, alternative to what?

The one thing I’m thinking about, right now, the singular word, is ‘tolerance’. My wife taught me about – ‘tolerance’. I had to open my eyes in my own terms, but perhaps I can express it with my words. The words that I was afraid to share as an isolated young man, alone, living in College Park trying to portray the important Mister Business Man character.

The fact is my wife encouraged me to start sharing my thoughts, my stories, my poems, while we lived in Orlando. And then, to accept fate. In part, from my writing, I learned not to be so judgmental.

One thing I have learned along the way, if another human being has a different lifestyle, a different ‘view’ from mine, I am not going to catch their ‘view’ like you catch the flu. It does not make them special, it merely makes them human. I think God loves us all, equally.

Appreciating another persons talents – artistic or other, makes me authentic. I realize how foolish and stupid I have been to stereotype anyone.

I’ll admit it, I took my wife to Kinky Boots. Pre-Show, I made some manly jokes to keep my straight-guy license, but in truth, it was and is, a terrific show. I cried during part of the show. It’s essentially about the relationship between a father and a son. It touched a raw nerve in me. But, I would go watch it again. It occurred to me then, and now, it takes courage to accept who you are, and let the world know your shoe preference. I wrote about socks.

After my first novel was published, Bobby’s Socks, I was terrified. It was and is the reason I use a nom de plume. Why? Because it was a story about child sex abuse and suicide. A story that talks about the difference between peadophilia and homosexuality.

After it was published, what response did I get from my friends? My clients?

Love. Understanding. Hugs.

I think that was God’s inspired response. It changed my life. I’m free.

If anyone has read my second novel, Fishing for Light, they’ll appreciate the character, Charlene Turnbull, better known as the former Charles Turnbull, married, father of two, and Tennessee lottery winner. And by the way, I wrote it before Bruce became Caitlyn. (But there are some odd similarities.)

Yep, I like to write about things that bother me, or things that I don’t fully understand. By writing, by expressing a point of view, a window for understanding opens for me. I write for me. To use a fancy word, it is cathartic – for me. Perhaps my words are cathartic for you?

So I’m standing here writing out my thoughts, trying to understand what happened in O-Town, The City Beautiful.

Simply stated, I do not understand violence. I do not understand what happened in our former town. A place not far from the ‘happiest place on earth’.

I do know one truth, It has zero to do with God.

To be clear, I do not claim to understand the mind of God. My brain is not big enough for that task, but it seems to me, as a flawed human being, humbled many times in life, that we tend to put God in our own square box so we can control – God, and by extension, so we can control our own destiny.

I think that notion causes Devine Providence to shrug. Perhaps, that is the lesson we all need to learn.

I am not the same young man that left Lexington, Kentucky many, many years ago. I have changed a great deal because I’ve seen much of the world. I’m not afraid anymore. And I have learned the best lesson that I would share with anyone – I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.

These days, my wife and her friends could have convinced me to go dance at a ‘gay club’. I’m not much of a dancer, I lack that groove. I’m a heavy footed white dude. But, I could have easily have been standing in a club in Orlando, or New York, or Houston, or anywhere, quite entertained, watching all the colorful personalities, thinking – “that guy would be a terrific character for my next story”. But then cruel fate might intervene.

The reason I believe in a higher-power is because I believe there is evil in this world, in the universe. Pick your own noun, the devil, lucifer, beelzebub. A pure evil that is darker than the blackest night, a dead void – a black hole, that lacks compassion, that lacks understanding. A sinister element that deceives the truth from the light with the whisper that they have control over what cannot be controlled. God.

But, in the end, I am left with the hopeful notion that even within the darkest reaches of space, there is enough timeless light sparked before man appeared on earth to help navigate us along our chosen journey. I think that is where God’s pure love waits for us, within us.

All I can do is express a simple prayer for peace and understanding for my former city, Orlando, The City Beautiful.

NS

5th&Hope – Cheapside

 

 

I thought I’d share a section from my current novel, 5th&Hope.

I’ll not tell where in the novel this scene happens, but I suspect some of my childhood friends will know exactly where Cheapside was, and its historical significance.

If you read this section, I welcome feedback – and feel free to share.

NS

——————–

Cheapside was an innocent looking grassy spot in Lexington next to the old domed Romanesque styled courthouse made from native Greystone topped with an aged slate roof. It was surrounded by green Kentucky State government historical signs that I had grown up walking and driving past as if they were as common as tan grains of sand on a beach. But if you had been an outsider from the southern culture, and born in Southern California and you had never been exposed to the Old South, and you looked up at a pale greenish bronze of a proud Civil War general atop a horse, like Amy had that cold morning, it might have been the moment you understood the Civil War had been a reality.

Amy read the historical markers out loud, and she read them several times more as if she had not been able to fully understand the concepts from a finance text book about derivative mathematics.

“Lexington was the center of slave trading in Ky, by the late 1840’s and served as a market for selling slaves farther south. Thousands of slaves were sold at Cheapside, including children who were separated from their parents.”

“I don’t believe this,” Amy said. She walked back to inspect the first historical marker, as if she was in total disbelief.

“No,” I said. “It was quite real.”

Amy inspected the bronze statue, again, and with her mobile phone took photos and researched the Confederate General’s losing story.

“On the N.E. corner on the Fayette County Courthouse lawn stood the whipping post established in 1847 to punish slaves for such offenses as being on the streets after 7 p.m.”

“I don’t get it, maybe I’m just hormonal,” Amy said. Her mouth gapped open as she held bag her hair with hands. “He lost, but got a statue, they whipped people, to death, right here.”

“We don’t talk about it much,” I said. I looked up at the weathered bronze monument. “But when I said you’re in the south, this was what I was thinking about.”

“Why the statue to him?” Amy said. She looked at me. “Where’s the memorial to the slaves?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “A lot of senseless killing-”

It was not a romantic Civil War reenactment party where no one would die; Robert E Lee was not a soft grandpa character from a novel, and like Ulysses S. Grant, they were hard, well-trained military men. Each had done their duty. I thought their armies had done all the talking. The issue had been settled. It was about looking at you from outside of yourself to seek the truth about life. The truth about our heritage was not pleasant. For what I had been numb to though, I thought as common place from growing up here had triggered Amy’s emotions. It was not a myth.

“I have a child inside me, it would have been a slave,” Amy said. She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t understand.”

“I was emotional, first was worst,” Ruth said. She looked over at Rebecca. “The first time, my second boy was totally different.”

“I’d like to see them,” Rebecca said. She tried to smile. “It’s been a very long time.”

I acknowledged a passerby as I stood staring at the sign. And it had been a real nightmare for real sentient human beings who happened to have dark skin, and who had prayed to the same God that my grandparents prayed to. And they wondered at night sleeping on dirt floors where their Moses was. I suspected Amy had felt like I had felt, a sick feeling. It reminded me the first time I had toured the Ann Frank house. I was neither Dutch, nor European, but if I had been standing in Amsterdam in front of that house in 1943, I would have been shot dead on sight by the Nazi’s. I was not Jewish, but I was a Jewish loving American, and they had to protect the fatherland from the Jewish infestation, it was their final solution for biological purity.

If the four of us had been standing at the same street corner in Lexington, Kentucky in 1843 before the Civil War, we would have safely witnessed the unthinkable. Like a large naked man with dark skin shackled to the ground so he could not run away. Whipped with a leather belt like a dog if he had disobeyed. I had experienced that feeling from my own father until I was big enough to fight back. But I was not a captive slave would have been paraded in front of an auction crowd in all weathers, full of families holding their babies, enjoying Court Day within the Lexington town square beneath the oak and sycamore trees. Paraded like a prized bull at a stock yard. His teeth checked to prove his good health, his body examined, gawked at to determine his worth. And then the auctioneer would have asked for bids for the estates chattel. The same process had been repeated thousands, and thousands of times as the sign had read at the same quiet spot I had stood near drinking my morning coffee, with an active farmer’s market behind me, and in front of a building based on the concept that justice was blind. But those auctions had also included innocent women, infants and their terrified children, or whole families, either purchased together or separated at the same spot ten feet from where we had stood on a sandstone sidewalk near a line of oak trees.

“Are you okay?” I said. I had put my arm around Amy’s shoulders.

“I feel sick,” Amy said.

“It’ll pass,” Ruth said. “Just part of it.”

“I’m not sure,” Amy said. “I want it.”

“You can’t be serious?” Ruth said. She touched Amy on the shoulder. “That’s a life inside you.”

“Let it go, her choice,” I said. The downtown traffic whizzed past us as random souls walked across the street from the six story modern pre-cast concrete parking structure to investigate the market with full baskets of heirloom tomatoes, yellow corn and jars of local produced golden bee honey. “My hometown is full of these historical markers I forgot they even existed.”

“It reminds me of those cobblestones in Amsterdam,” Rebecca said. She walked closer. She gripped my hand. “Holocaust victims, chilling…”

“Oh yeah,” I said. I nodded. “We walked over them until finally someone told us to look down, there they were.”

“It makes me sad, this place should be sacred,” Amy said. She had re-read the historical marker for Cheapside, again and again. “This was ground zero for slavery, it’s like there are ghosts here, ghosts searching for their families.”

“You can feel them?” Ruth asked. She shook her head. She walked close to Rebecca. “As if they are with us?”

“Totally,” Amy said. She kneeled down to touch the Kentucky bluegrass.

Rebecca and Ruth stood together sharing a black coffee from the ubiquitous double-tailed mermaid that had a happy location near each and every street corner.

“Lexington was a cross roads, still is,” I said. I pointed into the cold breeze. “Down this street is Henry Clay’s estate.” I turned Amy around. “Down there, is Mary Todd Lincoln’s home, behind me, Transy where Jefferson Davis went to school. Everything intersected here, it’s just our history. I guess you take the good with the bad.”

“No, history comes alive here, take yourself there, when,” Amy said. She wiped tears from her eyes. “I can feel it, them, I can hear the whip. Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” Rebecca said. She handed the coffee cup to Ruth. “Never apologize for how you feel.”

I had grunted, and nodded in agreement. I sipped the warm coffee from a white paper cup with a plastic lid. Amy seemed more agitated, more emotional than her normal well below boil temperament, but beneath her surface I had known there boiled her passion for history. I had admired that passion when we had first met her at the LA County Library. It was in her eyes, a similar passion my grandparents had had for Christian missions.

“We forget Lincoln and Davis were born in Kentucky,” Ruth said. “They likely passed each other in the streets.”

“That would be weird,” Rebecca said.

I stared the wrong way down Main Street as I felt the whoosh as several cars passed by me. I noted a street corner from where I had taken my driver’s license test; I stared up at the grey stone and mortar courthouse that looked like it was straight out of something Ellis Bell would have described in her novel, Wuthering Heights. I wondered if Heathcliff would appear behind the dark windows set below a series of triangle arches.

“When I was a young man, not far from here,” I said. “I used to drive down the same road, Old Frankfort Pike that Abraham Lincoln used to take a horse and buggy out to visit with his father-in-law who owned a hemp factory, for rope, not dope.”

“You don’t understand,” Amy said. She pulled one of my grandfather’s leather diaries out from her bag. “I didn’t understand. I feel stupid.” She sat down on a black painted rolled steel park bench set between oak trees surrounded by blooming chrysanthemums. She adjusted her reading glasses; she pushed them back up against her eyes. “He wrote about this, again, and again, I just missed it. I didn’t’ understand what he was saying.” She had marked numerous sections from his diaries. She began to read as she pressed the pages down with her fingers to keep them from blowing over.

“Went to Lexington, saw Negros, sad day. Don’t understand.”

Amy turned the page to another section within his diary that she had marked it with a paper receipt for chewing gum.

“They shot a black man, dead. I don’t understand. Violence. They do the same thing in California. Read from the monthly news we get from LA. Why? Where is God?”

Amy pushed the diary back into her bag. She pulled out another old diary. She had marked several pages with a variety of papers slips, sticky tags, or even a Kleenex tissue.

“Killed ML, why? The violence, why? I don’t understand. How can I protect my children? I prayed. Where is God? Are we in end times? Hazel agrees. We must trust God.”

“He wrote, he and your grandmother would talk about it,” Amy said. She paused as she took in an exaggerated breath. “He wrote about his time, I just didn’t understand what he was saying. I’m a historian, and I missed what he was saying. I am so stupid.”

My sister clutched the white coffee cup within her hands. She glanced at me as she walked over and then she handed the warm cup back to Rebecca who had followed her. She sat down next to Amy as a car full of children in the back seat parked behind them. The cars brakes squeaked loud enough I would have sent Wylie over to administer emergency repairs.

“You’re not stupid,” Ruth said. She hugged Amy. She shook her head. “We allow stupid. My grandfather, my grandparents, they were kind people. I miss them every day. But they had made their choices, they lived the life they chose.”

“It didn’t occur to me,” Amy said. She stared at her cowboy boots. She sniffled. “He was angry, but helpless.”

“No,” Ruth said. She closed her eyes as she hugged Amy. “He, they, were not helpless. They told the truth, but nobody wanted to listen to them. Nothing has changed.”

End.

NS

LITTLE BOY – Chapter 1 & 2

I’m writing a story that simply put, comes to me from time-to-time.

I have entitled it, Little Boy.

I have written the ending, so now I’ll begin to write the story.

It’s a rather emotional, lyrical story. I don’t want to cheat the pure feelings and thoughts, as I think they come from my core. So, I don’t want to, and will not, force it out of me against some relative time-line.

But I will share it in its entirety.

If you want to read it, as I journey along with the story, simply sign in to subscribe to my blog posts. When I post the next chapter, it will be emailed out.

It’s the best price ever, it’s free.

As to the heart of the story, I think each of us, girl or boy, at some level, wish we could return to being that innocent, curious child. From a time when we didn’t have expectations, we didn’t have experiences, and we didn’t understand, the why.

I still don’t understand, the why.

I get asked on a regular basis, “where do your stories come from?” I’ll answer that the best way I can.

To explain, I think they come from my childhood. My childhood family life was cold, it was hard. It’s was in a constant uproar. We were not a hugging bunch. So, as my wife understands quite well, I can be rather distant, but for a reason. Because I could never reconcile how other families were so ‘happy’, or what this whole ‘God’s unconditional love’ crap was about. I didn’t see it, day-in, day-out, so that instinct tends to ‘stick with me’.

But thankfully, I married well, in fact, I married up, and my London-based marketing folks, (that’s England, not Kentucky) – encouraged me to write blog posts, set up an author website, and get on Facebook. As they told me, insert English accent, “Bobby, if you’re going to be successful, you must be on Facebook, and the like, right, right.”

My wife simply told me, “go for it.” It might amaze you how a simple word of encouragement, from someone you trust with your life, how those words open up the world for anyone to attempt to do something that others might think unwise. It’s easy to be the critic, because you’re hidden in the crowd.

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – share what I write, share what I think, and share what I feel.

It felt like being dipped in bleach. But then after the scars healed, the embarrassment went away, and I’ve kept after it with my author brand. By the way, my nom de plume comes from my favorite boy name, Nathaniel, and my grandfather’s first name, Sewell. (He was a cool dude. He was authentic. He’s the preacher man holding me on his knee in the pasted photo.)

Now, like being at a modern shopping mall, better known as social media, I can obverse friends in their natural habitat with great curiosity, as they miss their families, or their friends, or their pets. Or they show me what they are eating for lunch or drinking for dinner. And I try to share back, so they can observe me, for being me.

So, to answer the question, as to where my stories come from? I write about what I wonder about.

As to the premise behind, Little Boy, I think after a loss of someone, or something that we loved, all we can do forevermore is to remember them. I think that’s the harsh reality. But as we all know, life happens.

But even so, at night, when it’s quiet, and still, we beg to borrow more time. We attempt to negotiate with God for one more hug, one more kiss, one more conversation, or one more, “I love you.” It’s like grasping at the wind, in hopes we might catch it. But we have nothing but our mortal souls to bargain with, as if we can to block the constant tidal surge from smoothing over the sands that marked our existence.

We all try to control what we cannot control. And it sucks.

As my childhood friends from Kentucky might say, “Bobby, it ain’t goin’ ta happin’, let it go.”

A few closing points, I think good literature is timeless. I think good literature speaks equally to children and adults. I think good literature does not insult us, but rather triggers us to feel, to think, as if we are viewing the world through another persons window.

Perhaps this is my homage to two of my favorite books, and writers, Shel Silverstein – The Giving Tree, and Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist. To be clear, I don’t come close to measuring up to either, but I want to express my deep respect  for their artistic gifts that they shared with the world. I think they proved that a good book does not need to be north of a 100,000 words, it does not have to be dirty, or polarizing. The magic they shared were in their word choices, it’s that simple, just pick the best, simplest word, and leave the rest behind.

My plan is for the story to unfold from childhood, to being a teenager, and to so forth… Below, I’ve shared the first drafts for Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 … If I ever get a publisher interested, I’ll draw the basic scenes, and I’ll fill in the words to show the story. And I know there will be the endless edits, the mis-spalled wads, poor gram. They always happen because I’m human.

Feel free to share it, share comments, share feedback … After all, it’s just my art.

NS

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Little Boy

An unblemished boy was hidden deep within his dream as he walked bare footed without fear along the grass path that zigzagged between the forests trees. His path marked with colorful dandelions, daffodils and daisies. He squinted his eyes as it was the darkness just before the dawn, but it was blanket warm with just enough gray light cast between the fresh limbs for him to see his future.

Even though he was a little boy, he was mature enough to sense he was being watched from behind the green leaves, and the tangled evergreens. Beneath the branches there were no dead leaves or jagged rocks near the soaring tree trunks that were hugged by a moist green moss that carpeted the forest floor. It flowed over the rocks, and it surrounded an active rocky waterfall that sounded like warm shower. It was the perfection from a new life that he had never seen.

After awhile he stood on the muddy brown bank near a clear stream that ambled further into the woods. It was stocked with plentiful goldfish and green turtles, the stones had been smoothed over from times constant current. He stepped into the cool water and he waded across to the other side to separate himself from those that watched him. He had learned from experience to always be aware and to avoid danger. But as he emerged from the water, he realized his white cotton pajamas were not wet. He was as dry as the moment he had gotten into bed. He stared back across the stream at the darkness behind the trees. And he noticed the grass path was now gone and he heard laughter coming from the forest.

“Who are you?” the Boy said. The forest was quiet, but for the breeze that whistled through the tree branches. “I cannot see you, but I know your over there.”

After awhile, from within the darkness a voice.

“It is your dream,” the Voice said. The Voice sighed. “You must choose forever more, you have many paths, you have many dreams, but you can never go back.”

The boy stepped back. He bit his lower lip. He stared back toward from where the path had been, but now it was overgrown with a wall of tall grass. To his left the stream coursed toward yellow light.

“I don’t understand,” the Boy said. He crossed his arms.

“Close your eyes, as your eyes are already closed,” the Voice said. “Now dream within your dream what you want us to be, and then tell us what you see.”

The boy looked down at his bare feet. He closed his eyes, and then he opened them. And as he watched the other side, a playful golden retriever sprang from the darkness as white doves landed along the tree branches.

“I want a doggy,” the Boy said. He grinned over at the dog. “But I can’t have one.”

“I’m not just a dog,” the Golden Retriever said. It curiously looked over at the boy as its furry tale wagged. “I’m your friend. I’ll always be your friend.”

“But I don’t know you,” the Boy said. “You can talk?”

“Yes you do, you’ve always known me. I can do anything you want me to do,” the Golden Retriever said. It scratched at the green turf, and the turf scar was quickly healed. “See, this is your dream. Because you dreamed for me, there are more friends here, you just need to dream us alive, like you dreamed for me, and the fish, and the turtles and the birds everything you see in your minds-eye.”

As the boy tried to understand his dream, a dandelion emerged from the moss to grow between his feet. It grew, and it grew to stand tall on its single stem just below his knees. But as quickly as it had grown, and flowered, it sacrificed its yellow flower life to transform into a giant blow-ball, as if covered with hairy white mainsails.

“What should I do?” the Boy asked. The birds cooed and nodded down at the dog.

“Do what you wish,” the Golden Retriever said. “Wherever you go, we will follow.”

And the boy had always wanted to blow on the seed-head and watch the stems float away like foam bubbles. During the springtime he had watched them from his window, the same window he had watched summertime fireflies light up the evening night. But he had never left his room. He stood behind the dandelion, he sucked in a deep breath and he blew. As the pedals detached from the stem, they enraptured the boy, as they caught the eternal wind that flew him like a collection of hang gliders toward the dawn. The Golden Retriever ran from the other side below the boy. The doves flew above and to the side, joined by blue birds and red cardinals. No matter how high he flew, the boy saw the dog was always within his sight. He was never alone. The stream snaked between the trees and the moss until he landed within a flat meadow covered in grass and flowers. But at the center of the meadow from where the stream bent into the dense forest, a massive willow tree beckoned the boy as he landed beneath its canopy tent of branches. The out of breath Golden Retriever sat back on his hind legs, his pink tongue waggled from his mouth, but it appeared to smile over at the boy. The birds landed along the trees limbs.

“Come fish our waters,” the Willow Tree said. “Look near my trunk, a wooden fishing pole we made just for you, and only you, I made from one of my branches.”

The little boy grasped the fishing pole. He touched the thin string, and examined the tiny hook where a brown worm wiggled at him.

“I don’t know how to fish,” the Boy said. He looked closely at the happy worm.

“We’ll show you how to fish,” the Willow Tree said. “Dip the worm into the stream, and watch the goldfish take the worm. As the fish takes the worm, pull back, and take the fish.”

“But they’ll eat the worm,” the Boy said.

“It’s what I do,” the Worm said. “I’m not afraid, cast me into the water, after the fish takes me, I’ll be reborn into another of your dreams.”

The boy dipped the worm into to the stream.

And the boy awoke from his dream.

2

The little boy was no longer a little boy, but a handsome teenager. But within his dream he would always be seen as a little boy. He would feel like a little boy. When he looked into a mirror, he had grown taller with thick hair and girls had begun to notice him. But deep inside, he missed that unblemished little boy as he had begun to feel the painful scars from life. He had thought of his dreamy friends often, but within his sleep he could not find them, until one night, deep asleep within his dream they all reappeared beneath the willow tree branches that set near the bend of a calm, clear stream.

“We’ve missed you little boy,” the Golden Retriever said. It panted at him as it sat back on its back paws near the willow tree trunk. “Have you missed us?”

“Are you real?” the Boy asked. He touched the tree’s hard trunk, he waded into the stream with the goldfish and green turtles only to reemerge dry as the moment he went to sleep. “Dog’s cannot talk in life, I should be wet from the water. Why did the worm have to die?”

“But the worm did not die,” the Willow Tree said. He waved its branch down at the boy’s bare feet. “Dig with your hands into the ground, tell us what you find.”

The Boy scratched and pulled up the green turf to reveal the hidden world below, it was the worm, the worms family and families of worms all hard at work burrowing within the fertile soil.

“I told you I would be reborn into another dream,” the Worm said. It wiggled. “Do you want to go fishing?”

“No,” the Little Boy said. He began to cry. “Why can’t I be a little boy again?”

The Golden Retriever lopped over to the boy. It nudged at his leg, and curled down onto his back. “Pet me.” It pawed at the Boy. “If you pet me, you’ll smile.”

After a moments hesitation, the boy kneeled down and scratched the Golden Retriever along his soft belly, and behind its furry ears. And the boy smiled.

“How did you know?” the Boy asked. He wiped his face as he stared up into the blue sky

covered with fresh clouds, and encircling birds above the Willow Tree.

“Why did you cry?” the Voice asked.

“Why have you come back?” the Boy asked. He looked around but saw nothing new, just the trees, the dog, the fish and the turtles. “Where are you?”

“I’m everywhere, I am always here, near you,” the Voice said. “Why did you cry?”

“Because I’m lonely,” the Boy said. “I don’t have a family.”

“You’re an orphan,” the Willow Tree said.

“What’s an orphan?” the Boy asked.

“An orphan lacks living parents, but you are alive,” the Voice said. “But we are all orphans to our destiny, each journey we face alone, as I told you before, as we walk we have many paths, many dreams, but you have to choose forever more.”

“But why can’t I be a little boy again?” the Boy asked.

“This is your dream,” the Voice said. “Perhaps within another dream you’ll understand why.”

And the Boy awoke from his dream.

End.

NS

A Prayer for Pink Petunia

Pink Petunia May 16, 2005 – April 19, 2016

As I rubbed Pink Petunia’s furry neck, I watched our tiny love pass into the next multiverse.

That morning, before dawn, she and I had discussed the inevitable. A few days before, a seizure had returned, it robbed her of her ability to easily walk. She would stumble, but she tried hard. She would shrug at me as she looked up at me, as if to ask if I had a solution. I had none. Before I left for work, I had given her one last asparagus treat. She never ate it.

A few hours later, our house keeper called me, “Pinky’s not doing well.”

The seizures had returned. The man-made medicines had been breached. I felt frozen in time and place as I drove her to the veterinary’s office. I called my wife, Rebecca. She saw the mobile phone picture. We rationally understood the moment, but it did not make those moments any easier.

Our veterinary neurologist, Doctor Longshore, who had saved her life for almost two years from a nasty brain tumor that hid behind her left eye, walked me through the process. It was called a euthanasia injection. I stood next to her, I didn’t want her to feel alone.

But I was helpless, I was lost in my own presence. As if I aimlessly floated in deep, dark space.

But it was not clinical, Dr. Longshore whispered each step to me. It was soft. It was kind. They had her wrapped in a warm blanket, a catheter had been placed in her left front paw. She panted for air as he thoughtfully explained each step. And then, her once happy dark eyes looked at nothing. She was silent. She was at peace.

At that exact moment, she lived forever in our memories.

The one gift Dr. Longshore had graced us with, a gift more valuable than anything on this planet, was time. Time for us to hug her, pet her, and tend to her needs. To tell her we loved her.

I tried not to cry, but I cried. I cried as I wrote this story. But, to feel that terrible emotional embrace, to not deny those emotions, to feel sorrow, to feel pain, to feel that instant separation, in truth, it allowed me to feel alive.

To know with certainty that I know what it feels like to love someone or something – unconditionally.

It was a feeling I had learned as an adult, because I had not learned it from my childhood. I had grown up not trusting anyone. But fortunately my wife Rebecca loves me unconditionally. She has patiently taught me – the how part, the rest is up to me.

I think there, in those moments, within that prism, hides the spark to understand happiness.

After Pinky’s doctor left the examination room, I kissed her head, I hugged her, and I said a brief prayer for her spirit. I tried to memorize her smell, I tried to feel her still warm body. A prayer for Pinky was the one thing I’m certain my wife would have wanted me to do. It was what my missionary grandparents had taught me to do.

So I prayed a simple prayer. If Devine Providence exists, that entity already knows what you are thinking, so I kept it simple, I kept it humble.

But as I’ve grown older, I don’t take a prayer lightly. I pray when I mean it. If I’m communicating with THE higher power, well, as my high school football coach would have said, “snap your chin strap, so you don’t get hurt.” Game on.

Perhaps my contrarian nature tends to get the best of me. So, my prayer was for Pinky, not me, or for our family. We are a tough minded crowd on the outside, but rather gooey on the inside. There are things in this universe that I cannot fully understand. And the fact I don’t understand them, well, it irritates me. I don’t like feeling powerless. So I have a tendency to argue with the unseen.

But the fact remains, I am quite sad. We are quite sad. But Rebecca and I both know – Pinky gave us that magical ability to share her unconditional love. She always wagged her ruby tail when either of us came through the front door. I think all animals feel, and if they feel, I think they feel love. I think she loved us. And we, loved her.

Now I know Pinky was a dog, and when we add a dog, or any pet to our lives, short of a Kakapo, we know it’s quite likely we’ll outlive them. I’ve been told and I have read that each year of my life equals to seven years for a canine. Canine is a fancy word for – dog. Pinky’s pills, phenobarbital, zonisamide, and prednisone all had a crafty C for canine before the prescription numbers. But when I read canine, I think hunter, meat-eater.

Pinky was not a hunter, she was a lover, she liked asparagus treats, although she did like steak, or chicken, or lobster, or… Well, you get the point, she was a child trapped in a dog’s body. Near her end, we gave her whatever she wanted.

Time has no master, God has already defined us all. The Alpha and the Omega. In time, it will take everything, every person or thing that you have loved. Eventually, it will take me. But then there are words, like joy, grace, the best being, love. It hurts to love. But I promise you, if you deny that pain, if you deaden the sorrow, you only cheat your self from feeling alive. In blunt terms, let your self bleed.

I was raised in the Christian traditions, but I don’t know if that faith outranks any other faith. But what I do know, any faith focused on giving hope and is centered on love – has to be authentic. A faith-based on hate and violence, is not a faith, it is a man-made perversion for a perceived control over nothing.

But the one thing I have learned in my journey, I have almost zero control over my destiny.

As a child every time I would cut myself from a stumble or fall, my grandmother Hazel would tell me the scar was a “Jesus band aid”, and she promised me that in time Jesus would heal the wound as if it never happened. But I always thought, but I would know it happened.

Pink Petunia scarred our hearts. It is a wound that we will carry with us until the moment we learn what hides behind the eternal light. But it is a wound we cherish, and there are memories of her that we will harken to our last breath.

We loved you, Pink Petunia.

NS

A Prayer for Pink Pentunia

Pink Petunia May 16, 2005 – April 19, 2016

As I rubbed Pink Petunia’s furry neck, I watched our tiny love pass into the next multiverse.

That morning, before dawn, she and I had discussed the inevitable. A few days before, a seizure had returned, it robbed her of her ability to easily walk. She would stumble, but she tried hard. She would shrug at me as she looked up at me, as if to ask if I had a solution. I had none. Before I left for work, I had given her one last asparagus treat. She never ate it.

A few hours later, our house keeper called me, “Pinky’s not doing well.”

The seizures had returned. The man-made medicines had been breached. I felt frozen in time and place as I drove her to the veterinary’s office. I called my wife, Rebecca. She saw the mobile phone picture. We rationally understood the moment, but it did not make those moments any easier.

Our veterinary neurologist, Doctor Longshore, who had saved her life for almost two years from a nasty brain tumor that hid behind her left eye, walked me through the process. It was called a euthanasia injection. I stood next to her, I didn’t want her to feel alone.

But I was helpless, I was lost in my own presence. As if I aimlessly floated in deep, dark space.

But it was not clinical, Dr. Longshore whispered each step to me. It was soft. It was kind. They had her wrapped in a warm blanket, a catheter had been placed in her left front paw. She panted for air as he thoughtfully explained each step. And then, her once happy dark eyes looked at nothing. She was silent. She was at peace.

At that exact moment, she lived forever in our memories.

The one gift Dr. Longshore had graced us with, a gift more valuable than anything on this planet, was time. Time for us to hug her, pet her, and tend to her needs. To tell her we loved her.

I tried not to cry, but I cried. I cried as I wrote this story. But, to feel that terrible emotional embrace, to not deny those emotions, to feel sorrow, to feel pain, to feel that instant separation, in truth, it allowed me to feel alive.

To know with certainty that I know what it feels like to love someone or something – unconditionally.

It was a feeling I had learned as an adult, because I had not learned it from my childhood. I had grown up not trusting anyone. But fortunately my wife Rebecca loves me unconditionally. She has patiently taught me – the how part, the rest is up to me.

I think there, in those moments, within that prism, hides the spark to understand happiness.

After Pinky’s doctor left the examination room, I kissed her head, I hugged her, and I said a brief prayer for her spirit. I tried to memorize her smell, I tried to feel her still warm body. A prayer for Pinky was the one thing I’m certain my wife would have wanted me to do. It was what my missionary grandparents had taught me to do.

So I prayed a simple prayer. If Devine Providence exists, that entity already knows what you are thinking, so I kept it simple, I kept it humble.

But as I’ve grown older, I don’t take a prayer lightly. I pray when I mean it. If I’m communicating with THE higher power, well, as my high school football coach would have said, “snap your chin strap, so you don’t get hurt.” Game on.

Perhaps my contrarian nature tends to get the best of me. So, my prayer was for Pinky, not me, or for our family. We are a tough minded crowd on the outside, but rather gooey on the inside. There are things in this universe that I cannot fully understand. And the fact I don’t understand them, well, it irritates me. I don’t like feeling powerless. So I have a tendency to argue with the unseen.

But the fact remains, I am quite sad. We are quite sad. But Rebecca and I both know – Pinky gave us that magical ability to share her unconditional love. She always wagged her ruby tail when either of us came through the front door. I think all animals feel, and if they feel, I think they feel love. I think she loved us. And we, loved her.

Now I know Pinky was a dog, and when we add a dog, or any pet to our lives, short of a Kakapo, we know it’s quite likely we’ll outlive them. I’ve been told and I have read that each year of my life equals to seven years for a canine. Canine is a fancy word for – dog. Pinky’s pills, phenobarbital, zonisamide, and prednisone all had a crafty C for canine before the prescription numbers. But when I read canine, I think hunter, meat-eater.

Pinky was not a hunter, she was a lover, she liked asparagus treats, although she did like steak, or chicken, or lobster, or… Well, you get the point, she was a child trapped in a dog’s body. Near her end, we gave her whatever she wanted.

Time has no master, God has already defined us all. The Alpha and the Omega. In time, it will take everything, every person or thing that you have loved. Eventually, it will take me. But then there are words, like joy, grace, the best being, love. It hurts to love. But I promise you, if you deny that pain, if you deaden the sorrow, you only cheat your self from feeling alive. In blunt terms, let your self bleed.

I was raised in the Christian traditions, but I don’t know if that faith outranks any other faith. But what I do know, any faith focused on giving hope and is centered on love – has to be authentic. A faith-based on hate and violence, is not a faith, it is a man-made perversion for a perceived control over nothing.

But the one thing I have learned in my journey, I have almost zero control over my destiny.

As a child every time I would cut myself from a stumble or fall, my grandmother Hazel would tell me the scar was a “Jesus band aid”, and she promised me that in time Jesus would heal the wound as if it never happened. But I always thought, but I would know it happened.

Pink Petunia scarred our hearts. It is a wound that we will carry with us until the moment we learn what hides behind the eternal light. But it is a wound we cherish, and there are memories of her that we will harken to our last breath.

We loved you, Pink Petunia.

NS

Kirkus Reviews – A Positive Review for Bobby’s Socks

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BOBBY’S SOCKS

by Nathaniel Sewell

KIRKUS REVIEW

Debut novelist Sewell spins a tale of childhood sexual abuse and a quest for justice.

Summer camp should be full of good times that result in happy memories, but that’s not the case for 9-year-old Robert. The evil Mr. Diabolus, who also serves as the assistant principal at Robert’s school, punishes the boy over a trifling issue by first locking him in a closet, then whipping and raping him. Afterward, the boy, who was raised in a very strict Kentucky home, feels that he can’t tell anyone about the matter, although people around him sense that something is clearly wrong. Diabolus later attacks Robert again, this time at school, and when the boy’s anger boils over at home, he finally tells his parents about it. However, they don’t believe his story and severely punish him. The only joy he has in his life is a cute girl his own age named Ardee, but she soon moves away. Thoughts of her stay with Robert as the years go by, as do memories of his friend Willis, whom Diabolus also victimized. As an adult, Robert has taken up a habit of drinking to the point of passing out. Ardee reappears and proves to be a kind but no-nonsense savior. She leads him to a psychologist, Dr. Richie, who may help him cope with the abuse that threatens to haunt him for the rest of his life. Sewell paints a vivid, if frightening, picture of life in a conservative, religious Kentucky town. For example, the summers are depicted as so hot that the heat “barely abated below a thousand degrees, with humidity dense enough to write your name in the air.” As a child, Robert is truly trapped by the institutions of school, church, and home, and the author writes about this living nightmare in a quite graphic way. The scenes that demonstrate Robert’s compassion for Willis also stand out for being particularly heartfelt, as do the protagonist’s too-brief encounters with his psychologist. Sewell impresses with her unique narrative approach and dialogue, which breaks apart stereotypes about therapy. The novel’s latter half has Robert and Ardee plotting to bust the sexual predator, which is satisfying in a way, but the book might have benefited from spending more time on Robert’s healing process.

A harrowing, sad, but ultimately hopeful novel about a survivor’s journey toward peace.

Pub Date: Jan. 17th, 2012

ISBN: 978-1-937273-18-7

Page count: 242pp

Kirkus Reviews

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A Kentucky Boy at 50

It has come to my attention that as of December 28th, 2015, I shall be 50 years of age. 50?

How has this happened? I don’t know what to think or to feel. I hope I am at my mid-point, but if not, that’s life.

I don’t want to write, 50 years ‘OLD‘, because I don’t think or feel ‘OLD‘. I’ve been lucky in life, by and large, and unless I told you I was 50, you’d not think me 50.

I don’t think I act like a stereotypical 50 year old remembering from my Kentucky childhood when men wore felt hats and wool overcoats, wingtip shoes and smoked a pack a day. It seemed everything was covered in a smoky haze. And I am old enough understand what it means to ask someone, “Do you have Prince Albert in the can?”

My hair has started to turn gray, but I am thankful to have my hair. I’m not real wrinkly, because all my wrinkles are hidden behind my hazel colored eyes. For the most part I’m in good health, although my knees remind me I’m not 18. I need glasses to read and write, but I like my old school frames.

I’m thankful that my wife loves me, and I love her. And that she has put up with my neuortic self for almost 20 years. In fact, it’s because of her that I started sharing my thoughts.

But what else do I think and feel? I’m 50. So what, I cannot change that fact.

First, I am thankful to be alive and have my health. Of course I wrote a novel about those pesky negative thoughts from my youth. I used a pen name for my first published novel because I was afraid to be discovered. But I’ve worked past all those negative feelings to realize my life has value. If you like what I wrote, thank you.

Now, these days I like my pen name, it’s my place where I go to write to me – for me.

Writing was something I was encouraged not to do when I was a child. Thankfully, I stopped listening to those negative influences, and these days I like wearing bow ties, colorful woven socks and writing.

What else have I learned from my journey that might be useful? These are things I wish I had learned when I was 5.

My life, or any life, is not determined by any known mathmatical model that takes the financial square root of my ownership equity divided by my popularity multiplied by the power of X.
There are a lot of rich and famous people who seem unhappy to me. I think that’s sad.
Seek whatever makes you feel happy.
I think my value equates to sharing positive thoughts and ideas with the known universe.
Be happy for someone else’s success. Then go find your own.
Be a good winner.
I try to act and be happy. Even if I don’t feel good, I don’t try to bring someone else down.
I work at being happy.
Be nice to the check-out person at the grocery store, the waiter or someone that provides a service. They have a job and they are paying their taxes.
If someone does not add value to your life, if they don’t encourage you to seek happiness, and respect you – remove them. I know that may read as harsh, but I mean it.
Compete. It might seem scary to walk toward the ledge, but if you step out without knowing where you’ll land, you’re living. Compete.
If you fall, get up. If you fall again, get up. (repeat as necessary)
Help someone get up after a fall.
I think the key to life is to never care what anyone thinks about you.
If you live your life weighted down by a list of complaints, you’re not living.
If you worry about what other people think of you, you’re not being authentic.
I think the political class divides us and creates conflict to enrich themselves and keep power. I think they are a sad crowd. I look at all those really old senators, and I wonder what good have they done? Not much. I don’t like how they manipulate our youth, and create a victimized class.
Don’t live your life as a vicitm. (See #10)
If you feel sorry for yourself, go visit the cancer ward at any children’s hospital. You’ll be instantly cured.
As to my faith, I don’t know if there is an almighty God. But I do know there is evil in the world. So, if there is evil, it would follow there is the polar opposite – good. I like a phrase that I will borrow to make my point, “I love Jesus, but I drink a bit.”
Love without reservation, even if you don’t get love in return.

And so I am lucky enough to be 50 years young. I wrote a line at the end of Bobby’s Socks that I hope I get to write about when I’m really, really old and wrinkled. “He got to be old, and lived a life of unconditional love.”

Happy Birthday, Bobby.

 

 

 

1929 Pierce Arrow – Let’s Travel Across Route 66

Now that I’m ‘patiently’ waiting for the initial story editor analysis, I thought I’d share the type car that the characters where in as they drove from Carmel-by-the-Sea down to Los Angeles, roamed about old LA, and then across Route 66 toward Kentucky. This particular car was originally owned by Charlie Chaplin. I thought it was a car that my grandparent’s could have actually seen as they studied at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, BIOLA, from 1926 to 1930. So, I thought the car was a perfect metaphor for then and now. I changed the color in the novel, but this car inspired me.

In truth my grandparent’s really drove a Model A Ford. As you can see, it was not quite as comfortable to ride, as a Pierce Arrow. And remember, they didn’t just drive around town, they drove across the country along the mythical Mother Road before it was called, the Mother Road.

 

Charlie Chaplin’s 1929 Pierce Arrow 4-door Dual Cowl Phaeton, 

Charlie Chaplin’s 1929 Pierce Arrow 4-door Dual Cowl Phaeton, 

 

My grandparent’s circa 1930, Model A Ford.

5th&Hope

Hello!

I have reemerged from my writing rabbit hole, as I’ve finished my current project, 5th & Hope. I’ve decided to share the opening. It tells the story of a middle-aged man’s journey to reconnect with his grandparents after his mother’s death.

5th&Hope

As the gray evening fog had billowed across my vantage point, I stood near the jagged cliff edge as a red-tailed hawk squealed its high-pitched warning. I leaned against a waist-high, custom crafted stone wall that separated me from certain death. I slowly peeked over the side and down into the cold, frothy gloom. For some odd reason as I blinked to clear my eyesight, it occurred to me at that very moment that Hazel was the one who had made a leap of faith. Not me, my faith was in money. Her faith had been in Sewell. And Sewell’s faith had been in God, whatever that was or is. He had gotten convicted by the Holy Spirit early in life after his brother’s tragic accident. But even so, I could not see my feathered hawk friend within the mists, or along the meandering beach line, or above me in the swaying trees. I stumbled back against the stone wall. The half-full crystal wine glass that I grasped in my right hand bopped and weaved for its life. But then I quickly held it close. I had regained control; I steadied it like a cargo ship’s captain fighting a white squall, certain from years of experience that the navigation point would emerge from darkness. It had, as Rebecca sat next to a blazing fire. She just amusingly nodded over at me. I gripped the rough edged stone wall with my left hand fingertips. I sucked in moisture as my eyes wobbled, bobbled in their sockets for clarity. But then I had regained control as I pressed my feet against the concrete slab. I always maintained control. I stood up straight, put my left hand over my mouth as I sucked in oxygen and then took a proper sip from my wine glass. It had an emerging fragrance with a peppery finish. It had an acidic tingle down my throat.

But I had known the bird was out there, near me, with its feathered wings out as it glided within the salty air. I had wished I could have flown with the predator bird. If only I could have fearlessly soared into the unknown. But that night the darkness seemed to encircle me, it crowded me; the wind nudged at me like I was an overmatched boxer and as if it had measured me for a final, fatal blow. My mind trapped like Typhon, I could not escape myself. If only I could have looked at me from outside of me. Thankfully I had Rebecca, she watched over me. She made sure I had not worn mismatched socks; assured me colorful bowties were cool for a man my age. I had glanced over at her.

Rebecca had stoked the fire. She silently allowed me to roam about the backyard like a drunken tourist. Why had I felt like crying? I don’t cry. I blankly stared forward curious if my grandparents were somewhere beyond me floating above the tidal surge in their own space and time, holding hands as they watched me from their relative position within heaven. If so, I was certain they were disappointed in me; I would have been labeled a backslider, a drinker, a man of the world. But I could not get their angelic images from my mind, and what made them so sublime to me? I wish I had known them in their youth, I thought it cruel we tend to only remember someone from old pictures, funerals, or the last time we saw them. It was strange to randomly remember someone. I had an old high school friend that had died young, under fifty, and now that was young from where I had stood contemplating the universe. I had found out years later, long after the funeral from a social media post from another high school friend that had marked the date and had gotten a large number of drive-by stamps of approval – Likes. His image transported me back in time to when I had red pimples, drank cheap beer, and had enough testosterone to keep my circus tent open for business 24 hours a day. I had found out by accident as I quietly spied into their lives. They all seemed so happy going on vacations, pumping out grandchildren, and they shared photos of their fried chicken dinner. Why? It was so odd, and yet it fascinated me. I had preferred to remain hidden. It had more to do with my family safety, but even so I was not real interested to engage with people that likely would have thought me a pariah. I set the wine glass down on the re-purposed cast iron table, gulped for air that oddly smelled like a forest fire thanks to Rebecca. I stuffed my hands into my warm bubbled nylon jacket pockets. I had been tempted to consider scooting down the stone pathway that traversed down to our private beach and then to have disappeared into the darkness. All I can remember of my deceased friend was his sunshine splashed face inside a high school football helmet telling us how often he was getting it on with Kendall. We all had known he was telling the truth. At the time we all wanted a Kendall doll, too. I squeezed my moist hands, thankful that my memory of him was not crowded out by staring down at his corpse pumped full of preservatives. I hated being near the star attraction at a wake when some random knucklehead decided to tell anyone that would listen that the corpse looked good. What does that mean? To me, they all looked as dead as Chairman Mao. I hated funerals. My grandfather had taken me along to enough random funeral services that he had conducted to last me into the next Pope’s lifetime.

The American Indians had it right; I had my two-inch thick will, written with quite specific instructions. Once I went into temporary cold storage on a metal bed, after a licensed facility performed a ritualized burning of my dead carcass to ashes, Rebecca would spread the remains of my carbon footprint in the Nebraska and Kentucky soils like a farmer’s fertilizer. At least she would profit from my demise, and she would take great comfort knowing I would have approved her choices. I thought cemeteries were a waste of valuable real estate and a form of humanities attempt to control death. It was absurd. I knew exactly the spot where my grandparents were buried. When I was sixteen, I had stood there on a hillside in the Eastern Kentucky cold being pelted by thick snowflakes at the moment the pallbearers had deposited my grandmother’s casket into the dark brown soil. They even had sealed her coffin with another metal thing that looked like the lid for a giant butter server. Why? Would my grandfather want to dig her up for a special occasion?

It was the one verse from the Bible that I had agreed with, and it was from the front of the story book, “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return”. But after that the Noah guy and his homemade wooden Ark showed up because earth-babes had been getting impregnated by giants, which God was none too pleased about. And then the book got into the hands of mankind, translated and published in the form they had chosen from being inspired. Why had they excluded certain chapters? When I was a boy, I had asked my grandfather if he had read Hebrew. He told me he had not learned it at BIOLA, but he had learned some basic Greek. But he understood what I had asked him. He had patted me on the head. At the time my hair was cut with a random Raggedy Ann method. He was not threatened by a little kid’s question. The reason being was my grandfather was always curious about the Bible, too. He had told me straight up he had not fully understood the Bible. And he knew man was flawed. He was flawed. But that he simply trusted God. He encouraged me to have a simple faith. He told me he was a sinner, too. He thought he had lived a blessed life, but to keep life and faith, simple.

I had not listened to him. I failed him.

But blessings come in such odd ways if we simply listen. I had not often listened to anyone else, but for my own instincts and math, because I thought math ruled the universe.

My grandparents were never rich; they had lived anonymous lives deep in the Appalachian forests that would have never been chronicled by a fancy historian. But for the most part, I guess, I remembered they had something you cannot buy with all of King Solomon’s gold, put simply, they had possessed happiness. As long as they were together, they appeared happy to me. In fact, I had known that was true because Sewell had told me so as I tested fate with my learners permit driving him away from the cemetery after Hazel’s funeral. Growing up, they were the two people I had always felt safe being nearby. I had rarely felt safe. After they died, I had forgotten what happiness felt like. I had gotten used to feeling under a constant pressure, the pressure to survive from a beating, or avoiding the regular domestic fights. The screaming, the lying, it was like a constant thumb pushed into the base of my skull that told me I was a disappointment. But I learned not to feel, to only focus my mind and determination to succeed so I could get as far away from them as possible. And I had learned well. But as I matured, I had learned to let the hate float from my inner being. It was toxic, and I finally realized it was my choice to like or unlike them. I had easily chosen the later. But then there are certain thoughts learned in youth that are hard to shake. They are like dark shadows, whispers that remind you you’re really a loser, you just got lucky in life. But don’t ever forget, you’re a loser, you can’t hide from us. We know you.

As my deep breath released from my lungs, I clutched my jacket lapels closer to my neck as the evening’s memories had chilled me down to my toes. The jacket made me feel like I was hidden within a protected cocoon. And the sensation reminded me what if felt like to be alive, to compete, to calculate beyond myself. I wondered about Hazel, in 1926 she had been standing at a Los Angeles street corner surrounded by a growing city, when her life randomly intersected Sewell’s. I was curious if Hazel had adjusted her wide framed eyeglasses and had calculated that Sewell was her best option, or if she had been that desperate to escape from her mother. I had known what that felt like. She was smart; I always wondered what was going on behind her brown eyes. The same eyes Sewell would glance over at during a church service for reassurance, she would nod back at him as she played an out-of-tune upright piano. Years later, it was the same look Rebecca would give me before a Board of Directors meeting. She gave me the courage to vanquish fear. I had already experienced a worst case scenario and had lived to tell the tale, even though I was clueless at the time. Thankfully, my emotional scar tissue was as thick as an African elephant’s hide.

But the one thing I was certain about, life was an adventure if you took a step forward without knowing where your foot would land. If you feared that ledge, you’re already dead. I clenched my jaw line as I inspected my vast estate. We are creatures created by a God with the self-awareness that had stamped our DNA to instinctively hunt to survive, to compete. I hunted for money; my grandfather had hunted for souls. It was a simple calculation, if we do not feed, our bodies, our souls died. If we do not challenge our minds, we rot from the inside out. I guessed it depended on what you are hunting for. Of course these days, I hunted for nourishment at the local specialty market in a wimpy gatherer fresh or frozen food method, while the hawk used its sharp claws for the fresh, organic hunter method. We happily coexisted on the same exclusive property. I had the big Mediterranean style house with a clay tiled roof, and paid the maintenance bills and the idiotic California property taxes that only someone like me could afford. The hawk had built a large wooden freeform family nest high above me in a protected live oak tree, and it covered the rent by acting as a natural exterminator. I grasped the wine glass at the stem and sipped the wine again. I blinked my eyelids as particles of moist residue cleansed my pasty-white face. Thanks to Nikola Tesla the nearby estates had cast enough electrical light that allowed for the shadows of the irregular tree line to emerge from across Carmel Bay. But nature had not blessed me with the hawk’s eyesight, as it was likely seeking its next meal skimming atop the frigid submarine cannon, past humpback whales that swam near clusters of seaweed, and the playful sea lions that were likely slapping their flat tails against their rocky night time island refuges.

Each day we had a perfect perch to observe the human and animal goings-on atop the land and within the oceans currents. I glanced down to barely make out the sea water that foamed across our beach. Ocean’s spanned more than two-thirds of the planet and supported all life forms, fish, bacteria, even mammals, but it would not support my oxygen breathing carcass. Unlike the hawk I could not fly. If I had drunkenly fallen from my custom made stone and steel perspective without a life-vest, I’d drown after bobbing briefly like a smashed blowup doll before taking on water, and becoming fish food. And then I’d be forgotten at the bottom of the salt water with the other shattered SOS bottles. But it was my choice to drink wine; it was my life choices that might get me killed. I guess Hazel had made her choice, and then she was not afraid as she traveled east in a Model A Ford with her man, and then they lived together until breast cancer had caused them to part. But they believed death would be a temporary parting, and then they would live together in paradise with sweet Jesus. I had my doubts. I just thought after my pulse ceased it all went black.

Death scared humanity, it scared me. I thought it was because we fear being forgotten. But I distinctly remembered Sewell welcomed death after Hazel died. Even though I was a boy, I could tell the pilot light behind his blue eyes had gone out. I had wiped a tear from my eye, and held the cold glass against my pug nose. Why was I crying? Stop. I had all the financial resources a man could dream for; I had any adult toy I wanted, I had jets waiting to fly me anywhere I wanted on short notice, and I had a loving life partner. But I would have been a failure in their eyes. It had nothing to do with money; it had everything to do with living the missionary life, a life of service to mankind. And yet, I had stood within the Monetary Bay Peninsula listening to the wave’s crash and recede. The news I had been expecting for years had finally come to pass, and at that very moment I missed my grandparents counsel like I would have missed breathing oxygen.

End.