Living Life Alive

There was a time when I lived on an isolated tip of a tropical peninsula.

It was a place where the days were bleached in a searing sun. Where the afternoons were ritually ripped apart by monstrous thunderstorms.

It was serene and peaceful. Where the nights could be spent listening to the waves crash across the dark dunes; where baby turtles scurried across the cooling sand.

Back in those days, I drove a yellow convertible; frequently along the coastal highways. And across the numerous bridges the locals called causeways.

On the causeways, pirated Spanish Mane winds would whip the little car back and forth with salty air that smelled of endless summers and vacations.

The turquoise waters there were as beautiful as to be surreal. And on the warm, sugary sand, the spectators and dreamers would gather. The sand was a place that offered an opportunity to live life most uniquely and startlingly alive.

But the sand was an illusion - it was an almost infinite collection of single pieces of the finest silica - fragments of seashells deposited over the eons. Things once alive in their beauty were now given to be among the collected and carpeted; forever witness to the ultramarine sky and turquoise waters.

I was reminded of that when I saw the poppies.

It had been a picture of the Royals - Kate, William and Harry - walking through a crimson sea of poppies in London. It was a stunning comparison.

The origin of the poppy symbolism comes from words penned in May, 1915.

Army surgeon John McRae was in France, near the Ypres-Yser canal. And he wrote moving words that would bequeath generations with a poetic grief that would forever remind us all of life's value.

Of the joy of living life. Of the gift of being alive.

Hiding near the river, he watched, up close, as a fellow soldier lost his life. After he escaped death himself, he wrote a heartfelt poem about what he had witnessed - about wasted lives and the profound sorrow he felt for them.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

And that simple poetic treatise is why, at the Tower of London, individual poppies commemorated the nearly 900,000 servicemen who lost their lives; who lost their living.

McRae's simple words will forever describe the precious nature of life - and loss. That the suffering the loss of so many souls is a greater loss than any land, any ideal. That such a great sacrifice should never be asked.

Each flower offers itself to beauty of the whole - a royal carpet upon which Kate, William and Harry would slowly stroll, in amazement of the coral glory.

Back in my little corner of paradise, I was reminded that living alive was a gift that wasn't always granted to everyone.

I was alive and living. Breathing, writing, feeling. The Caribbean winds blowing my hair around on the causeways.

Walking in the soft, sugary sand and gazing at impossible turquoise beauty.

Strawberry Wine

"The fields have grown over now
Years since they've seen a plow
There's nothing time hasn't touched
Is it really her or the loss of my innocence
I've been missing so much?
Yeah

Strawberry wine and seventeen
The hot July moon saw everything
My first taste of love, oh bittersweet
The green on the vine
Like strawberry wine"

Amazon music was playing that song while I studied.

I looked up, away from the adenosine and enzymes and all things forgotten years ago. Listened to the minor notes of the break. Of the fields grown over. Of nothing that time hadn't touched.

Our study was about an enzyme blocker; a new drug that would support one of the most expensive and curative cancer treatments ever designed. A tiny molecule. A co-drug that would protect a patient's body from it's own version of biochemical suicide - while the other drug worked its magic.

It made me think of my sister, wondering if this would have saved her, six short years ago. I thought of her in hospice; hopeless. It helped me remember that this wasn't about a twisted, helical puzzle of molecules and pathways and cell biochemistry. It was about life.

Like the special one that we lost.

Life, a collection of untold moments of fullness.

Like that July moon in 1976. The October leaves in 1995, dressed for Halloween. Sledding that winter. The bright yellow-greens of Spring in the courtyard at Sacred Heart.


Memories that taste like the August blueberries we picked and the Michigan Cherries she loved. The smell of her chocolate chip cookies.

Memories of the sounds of her kitchen, when so many gathered around her counter, on chairs, on couches, and crowded into the laughter of generations; in the cacophony of barking dogs and crying babies.

And so, when the new cancer frontier begins to seem like just so much heartless chemistry, I think of her - and the way she fought to keep making memories. That it's not just chemistry.

And yet too often, much like six years ago, we know fights will be lost.

Even in that, I think there's a bittersweet comfort.

I hope she was thinking about when her life was green on the vine. That she was remembering summer cherries and July moons and her first date. The she could feel that small hand in hers on halloween, walking among the leaves.

And I wonder, in the end, if the best measure of comfort has nothing to do with chemistry.

It's the comfort of a life lived, green on the vine. Of summers and kisses and Octobers and tiny hands held. Of crazy kitchens and an adoring family.

Of bliss.

It's God's own sweet, sweet, medicine.

Strawberry Wine.

Rudyard's Path Forward

Race and racism. Greed and poverty. Cancel culture. Covid. 

We have become a nation divided. It cannot be understated. It has become who we are.  

This reality is numbed and hidden by the bread and circuses of technology. Implanted values. Implanted entitlements. 

So go on, blame and hate and riot. Then be ready to step into the abyss - a new kind of national treasure, a Grand Caynon, filled with a volcanic effluent. A lava-like mix of secrets and lies garnished with massive debt and the occasional secret genetic mutation. 

To consider whether we are past the point of no return is existentially frightening. 

A mighty river of divisiveness winds through the nation's soul; polluting, eroding, destroying, and eroding the fragile protections once constructed with ink and quill in Philadelphia. 

People like Martin, John, Robert, Malcom, Rosa, Abraham - they all worked to stem the current - before it could collapse the concrete philosophy of righteousness built by previous generations.  

This, from a nation that had an addiction to the printed dailies since the 18th century. That huddled behind radios and televisions to be comforted and connected to each other - from World War II through Vietnam and Watergate and the Iran Hostage Crisis. Especially through the darkest days of November, 1963, when our country's future would change forever.

And now this. Divisiveness. Distrust. Agendas.

The fabric of American values and political ideals was woven in the illumination of colonial candles. A cloth of specialness, enduring and exceeding all expectations.

Change, for the purposes of social justice, is a worthy pursuit. Some may say it's the purpose of the soul to seek justice and pursue a path toward social change. It's worthy of your full thought, your complete self. Your soul.

If there is an obvious truth behind what we pursue, why do we disagree? Perhaps the balance of this nation's values and beliefs are so perfectly and oppositely weighted that they cannot be reconciled. 

Maybe we need a national therapy session. I believe that someone needs to tell ALL of us how to shake our heads, squint our eyes and stay focused on justice and truth. Not by memes or populist imagery.

Or, perhaps more simply, we could read the inspiring words penned by the 1907 Nobel Laureate, Rudyard Kipling.

They're found in his poem "If", written in 1895.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

.... Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

then you'll be a man, my son.

It's a path forward, a gift, from 1895.

Second Chances and High School Dances

My sister and I were recalling the funny and politically incorrect movies we saw in high school – of headgear and pimples and double entendres and gawky teen actresses.

She teased me. "I know you liked Molly. You always had a big crush on her.”

“Me?  No I didn’t,” I denied. “But I bet she's even more beautiful now,” I offered, thinking that I might have a chance with the more mature and possibly washed-up version.

“Well, not really, she’s like, over fifty. I just saw her in a movie where she played the mother. I don’t think you’d be all that interested.”

In high school, I probably would have been interested.  Looking back, they were days spent in a sort of fog - one of self interest and experimentation.  What I remember seeps back in sensory waves – musty locker rooms and dance floors; classrooms and cafeterias, China Grove and the Doobie Brothers.  Pintos, Mavericks and Plymouths.

We didn’t think about the economy and Watergate and what was happening overseas. We were sealed in a blissful cocoon.  But we did think about girls.  A lot.  We were a thirsty bunch of Y-chromosomes, and girls were fountains of cold water in our testosterone desert. They stirred the fog and dizzied our senses.

Looking back, we didn’t choose them for their interests or intelligence – we liked them for their hair, their friends, our convenience.  Because of that, our relationships were destined to be fleeting.  Most of us can remember few moments today from those dates and dances and back seats.

I'm grateful now that we were able to experiment. We made simple choices because we were not complex individuals - after all, we liked Ford Pintos.   But we fantasized that those relationships were more profound than they really were; that all the drama and melodrama were the real thing.  They weren't, but it was a good dry run.

What mattered to us then were our friends, our image of ourselves, and our need for validation. Our role-playing dramas helped us grow. When they ended, we were stronger, like newly pruned trees waiting to grow stronger and taller next season.

We weren't looking very deeply, even though we convinced ourselves with certainty that we were.  If we knew someone who wanted to go Yale or Stanford, it didn't impress us much.  If they weren’t beautiful, accessible, or part of our group, they were probably bookworms.  And they were invisible.

We couldn’t see that someone’s values were perhaps richer, their visions perhaps deeper. Our brains weren’t growing in the right ways. We thought about Friday night.

But, had we not experimented, had our relationships not been simple and shallow and doomed, we might have chosen a life partner who didn’t have the vision or depth or connection important to us now - now that our brains have made the connections they lacked decades ago.

Yet not everyone has benefited from lessons learned in the fog of youth. Sometimes, the metamorphosis occurs later in life, beyond marriage, beyond children. Couples find themselves wondering about the depth of their love; the fulfillment of their life's promise.  And perhaps the person wearing the gold band sitting in the kitchen may not be the soulmate they need.

That person may be the one who went to Stanford.

So, after my sister and I reminisced about Sixteen Candles and The Breakfeast Club, I dreamt - of Molly Ringwold.  Embarrassing but true.

In my dream, she told me she was available - but I told her I wasn’t interested.

Anymore.

******

Midwinter's Jicker

It was the Midwinter Jicker,
in Spades then in Jacks
Carelessly careening
with us in its path

Brick ice cold buildings,
Victorian floorboards
Its tenants and walkers,
they all had been forewarned

Generations they gathered,
forted in an oasis
the big city shoulders
the young Archimedes

Our spiritual yogis,
Believers and psalmists
Dreamers and healers,
oldest and youngest

But the Jicker, it rolled on, depressing, tormenting,
Then it blew the lights out in a great soul undressing