Cheeseburgers and chocolates

  Life was simple back in high school. Oh, I can remember thinking that each day was to end all days. I can remember feeling like it was just enough to get through the day without someone picking on me.  I hated most things about school. I did my best but I was very self-conscious when I was younger. I tried to do my best but when I failed I felt all eyes upon me.
   Why do we go through life believing that?  That failure means everything and fear what people will say. I can remember my parents saying not to where red on Thursdays. If I did it meant I was telling everyone that I was gay.  It was a hold over from the 50's. This happened so offered I stopped wearing red all together.
  I can remember in my high school, if a guy wore an earring on the right side he was saying to the world look at me, I am gay. But what does that tell my about myself. I was just as bad as everyone else. I would have been first to point out a right earring wearing peer.
  Now life is different. I am not that self-conscious about anything but maybe my weight. I go to work and do my best to please my employers. I follow the laws of my community. I help with my family and try to help my friends as much as a can help.
  Tom Hanks in the movie Forest Gump said it best, "Life is like a box of Chocolates, you never know what you are going to get." My life has been like that, I have been to the other side and looked back. I have been homeless, I have been alone, and it changes nothing. I have bit into my box of chocolates and choked on what I found.
  I guess what I am getting at if I wouldn't have taken that first bit of chocolate I would never have left Sunnyside, I would never have gone to the city, never have went to Central Washington University, never did everything that needed to be done. So I could meet the love of my life and have a great child. So I could live in a great house, literally my dream house. We went to a real-state agent and described a house and this was the house that she picked out for us. My dream home was a beautiful house in a nice neighborhood across from a park. Will I live here for the rest of my live? I might or I might not. I don't know what my next bite of chocolate will bring. Will it be a lovely favor or a nasty concoction? I don't know.
  All I know is life is too short to swallow cheeseburgers every time life gets stressful. I will work on this in the future and maybe just maybe, call a doctor if I do have a heart attack. (Read Cheeseburger on this Blog)

Working late at my dad's

  Last night was a very busy night. I got dressed for bed and ended up in my dad's shop. He was planning on going on a trip soon, so he needed me to help him work on his trailer lights.  We rewired it and even wielded new mounts for the tail lights. Once that was done we tested it and it still didn't work.
  "Crap," he said.
  "What does this mean?"
  "The trucks lights plug is bad, and it doesn't really matter the trailers lights needed reworked anyway."
  So an hour past and we got the lights on the truck to connect to the trailer and it made me feel good to help him once again.
  "I know it is late, James but can you help me clean up the shop."
  "Sure," I answered, even though I wished nothing more than to go to bed.
  We brought the tools inside and started wiping them down. I was like a robot picking a tool up, examining, cleaning it to a shin, and then returning it to it place on the bend. That was where he hung most of his tools. We even painted them pink at one point so we could tell that they went above the bench.
  The shop as clean and soon I was saying goodbye.
  I awoke then, I tried not to cry, I both love and hate that dream. I miss him especial days like this. God rest his soul.

The Contradiction

  My first year in college was a time for change and growth. I left the small town way of life behind and in braced the city of Seattle. Compared to cities back east, Seattle is still a small town. But the lessons I needed to learn wasn't from the fact it was large but it was far away from what I considered home. That first year noted changes in my life that could have only have happened that far from home. I saw love and cruelty; I saw sadness and hope at every turn. Evil and good made their home on every corner and I lost myself somewhere along the way.
  Someone smarter than me once said that in order for a boy become a man he must kill his father’s image that he holds up to the light. Now, I am sure he didn't mean to kill my father, but he did mean for me to forget that my father was an all powerful man.  When we are small we look up to our parents as man looks to God. They give us everything and ask little in return.  I got away from my parent early and grew years beyond from the way I was when I left. I learned more about the world in the first 6 months in Seattle than in the first 18 years of my life.
  I picked up a hooker once. I was driving and this woman was hitch-hiking on highway 99, just over the boarder to king county. She wore tight shorts and a bikini top. Just the kind of girl you wouldn't take home to your parents. Well, long story short my passenger announced she was a working girl and I asked her how far she wanted to go up road before I dropped her off. I wasn't mad at her, I was mad at myself for not seeing just what she was doing standing on the side of the road in the middle of the night.
  Then there was the guy that wanted to go into the woods at night with me.  Never took him up on that offer and I am glad I didn‘t.  He claimed to be looking for Meteors. I just didn't trust him. Something was wrong about him. I laughed at this the day he was picked up by the police for assault.  Never heard anything else about him but I wondered for years if I would have every stepped from the woods if I had walked into the secluded spot with him as he had wished.
  Once I was standing at the entrance to a library and met up with a friend. He introduced me to a group of six of his friends as they filtered out of the double doors. One looked at me and said, "He looks harmless enough."
  I told her my name was Todd, Todd Bundy.  Only one of the seven understood what I was saying. She became my girlfriend of the month. I had peaked her curiosity and she liked to live dangerously as I soon found out.  Watch the movie, Blind Date starring Bruce Willis.  Our dates were a lot like that movie, fast and dangerous.  What was I expecting from a woman that wanted to go out with a serial killer's relative?
   Then there was the Goth crew I tagged along with, today they would have been considered Emo, but we didn't use labels back then. We just hung out at dance clubs and Denny’s restaurant all night. I loved the music the most. It was loud and probably the reason I have a little hearing loss today. We listened to heavy metal and punk while enjoyed each others company. When we were together I wasn’t depressed and wasn’t sad. I was me.
  I liked to dress in black; it really fit my mood about life.  I like the music and the group as a whole; they let me hang out with them excepting me almost from day one. I can only remember faces today and this makes me sad. There was Robert our leader and Pete he liked to play the air drums, but for the life of me I can’t think of the rest of their names. I get flashes of their faces and that is all. Like young it is probable best that I don’t jump into those memories very long.
   I met my crew at a club up from my apartment. It was called 'Tuneups and Beats’ or ‘turn up the beats.’ For six months I would go there and hangout with my new friends. Night after night, I would go out and be myself, a depressed young man in a room full of depressed teenagers. My parents called them death-mongers. They were referring to the fact that they believed that my new group of friends were a bad influence and promoted death. I liked them all the same, they understood me, or at least I thought they did. I wore black clothes with no labels, untied boots and always a hoody. I wore chains around my ankle and used one as a belt. Yes, I was back to my same old ways that I had introduced to my school years before.  I would wear my hair long in the front and hide from sociality.
   I started to use stiffing gel on my hair and going to college dress that way.  I quickly learned that people judge you on how you presented yourself.  I was surprised that I failed a class. Going back I figured out that she (The Teacher) was using her power of grading to punish me. I never understood that. She believed that she thought she knew what I was and that I was something that she didn't approve of; she may have been right but what business was it of hers.
   What I wore didn't define me. I had learned this in college and high school. I also learned that you can’t please everyone. Wearing black doesn't make you want to kill yourself and wearing pink doesn't make you gay. Acting grown up doesn't make you an adult. (That lesson took the longest to learn.)
   I learned a lot that year. I learned that people are cruel and unforgiving when you thought they should they would be kind and then I are surprised at the people that I thought were mean were really nice.  I told a story about a chess match the other day. There was more to the story, trust me there always is more to the story. I didn't mention that I was dressed in all black and angry at the world. I sat there dressed in Goth, with a chain around my ass playing chess by myself. I was a contradiction in terms. I did mention that I was depressed and I guess that is why it was so easy for me for fall into a group as with the crew. We were a band without instruments, each had a part to play in our concert we called life.

Tail # 8: Teddy, the clairvoyant dog

  When I was 8 my parents had a dog that belonged to my Grandmother, his name was Teddy.  He was a black poodle. I can remember see photos of the dog back into the sixties and he last into the 80's. So we have come up with that he must have been 23 years old before he died.  The truth is we don't know how old the dog really was. He seemed like he had been in the family forever.
  My dad used to go to my grandmothers unannounced after driving 90 minutes to get there. He would show up in the middle of the day and knock on the door. He would sit and she would hand him a fresh cup of coffee. One day, he asked her about the coffee.
  "Mom, you haven't started drinking coffee have you?"
  "No, I can't stand the stuff,” she offered, taking a seat across from him.
  "Then why do you always have a fresh pot on?” he asked, taking a sip of the scolding hot coffee.
  "I don't always have a fresh pot on, just when you are coming to visit,” she answered.
  "Hmm, but I didn't tell you that I was coming,” he asked.
  "I know, Teddy did,” she answered with a smile.
  Now my dad looked down at the dog and back up to my grandmother. "Explain?"
  "He scratches at the door when ever you or one of you sisters are about to show up and he is hardly ever wrong," she answered with a smile.
  The dog was hardly ever wrong and the fresh pots of coffee came until one day my dad slipped into the Grand ma's and there was no coffee.
  He looked down at the old dog and then back up to my Grandma. "So he didn't know I was coming today."
  "No, he knew. I just found out I was out of coffee," she answered, showing him the container in the bottom of the garbage, the note with a shopping list written out on it, and then she raise her purse showing she was ready to go.
  "Where you going?" dad asked.
  "I am ready to for you to take me to the store," she laughed.
  My dad for years thought that someone else was supposed to take his mother to the store, but no one has ever steeped forward.  When she died my family inherited that toothless dog. He was old but he started a new life in at my house and we enjoyed his company for many years.

How I came out of the Closet

  My parents used to tease me over the fact that I spent to much time in the closet. They discover me there more than once. They worried about such eccentric behavior. 
  "They would tell me to stop this action and come from the closet."
  The truth was I felt most comfortable in my closet: protected, defended, safe, and most important free to be myself. I loved that closet. Closing the doors and to the outside world was the only way I felt I could be myself. 
  Each day I would come home and fire up my television and read books of far off lands. Places I knew deep down that I wound never visit. I was happy in side that closet of mine. 
  Soon I talked my dad into moving a larger dresser into my room and I cleared to cloths from my closet and it made it even better. The television I placed on a shelf inside the closet and I talked dad into letting me have an old car seat. 
  That was the biggest closet I ever owned. All the rest just weren't deep or wide enough. I invited a friend over once he saw the humor of my closet. The jokes started, and the names that hurt and our friendship ended. He lacked the foresight to under stand the pain he cause me both at home and at school.
  I left my closet one day and never returned. Cloths and boxed filled the gap in my life. I miss the good old days of disappearing into that closet. Late my junior year in high school, I moved in my brother’s old room that had a closet with no doors. I moved my television and home computer into my brother’s dark room. It was another closet on the other side of the house over the stairs. It offered the needed protection but little ventilation. 

  If you haven't figured it out sometimes a closet is just a closet and one guy's closet can be another guy's 'Man Cave'. 

Zen

  It amazes me to think about how a single comment can spur such internal conversation. I am a writer, an author, an artist, and many other things. Zen moments for me don't really come often enough. When they do I wake up as if waking from a dream and time has past. Maybe 5 minute maybe an hour. I can say that I didn't pass out; I can remember what I did. First a feeling of joy comes over me and then one of sadness. Like withdrawals I wish I could return to that point in time at will.

  I have been told I am having experiencing Zen. I joke some times and say is that anything like a senior moment. I know these times are special and I can reach these points a few different ways. One is in a quiet room listen to Celtic instrumentals while relaxing with my eyes closed.
  The second way I experience Zen is the way that seemed to come easier and the most often of the occurrence, it is while driving my car on long trips. No radio, no conversation, just the open road. Soon I realize that time has pasted and I am miles from where I remember being. I have been told that Zen moments are nothing more than the right side of you brain taking over for the left.
  The right side of the brain is the creative side in charge of lying, art, dreaming and filling in when the left side shuts down.
  Now the left side is in charge of math, decisions and logic. It works in concert with the right but sometimes it decides this is boring and says, "Wake me up when it over."

  When I was younger I experienced Zen easiest when I was mowing the lawn. I go in descending circles as mow the lawn. At some point, I lose myself in the white noise and the absences of thought. I awake and the lawn is done and I leave my trimmed lawn wishing I had a bigger yard to mow. I miss Zen moment mowing days, I can't stand in the sun like I used to, I take medication that magnifies the sun's effects and I come to the point of heat stroke.
  Writing and art helps me reach my Zen/Happy place. I look up after what seems hour and I have put 1500 words on a page or drew something that was far beyond my talents. The hour turns out to be hours and I secretly wish I could do it again. Time had pasted but I can hardly believe how much has past.
   While in fact, I started a timer when I started this post. I have been typing for 39 minutes and it doesn't feel like 39 minute it feels like 10 or less. I have lost myself in a Zen moment just now and I feel relaxed and centered. If anyone would like me to explain the mental process of reach a Zen moment send me comments and I will write more on this topic.

To let it go

  Over the years I have been taught to try to let thinks go. I know in the past I have talked about stress, but what I am referring to is when someone or thing attacks you, sometimes it is best to let it go. In my case I try to let most things go. But there are the moments in my life that stick to my insides. (Yes, like cheeseburgers)
  Take the time that my family went to Utah for a family reunion. I went with my parents on the trip. My brother was at that age when he wanted to stay home and mind the fort. It was good to see everyone and we like the Lake that they had picked for the reunion itself. I was high up into the mountains almost touching the cloud themselves. It would have turned out to be a great 4 days if it wasn't for my brother getting attacked in the back yard of my parents home.
  He heard a noise walked out the back door and made it just to the shop when someone hit him over the head with a 2x4. He woke up an hour later and called the police. It was a frightful thing to happen when we were so far away. Being that we weren't in the age of cell phones; we only found out about it because someone from the police station called the ranger station.
  I was mad, upset, and I felt violated. I must admit that I went for a walk to work things out. My parents decided to stay one more day and that kind of pissed me off. I wanted to get home and make sure he was indeed, okay. We heard from him and he told his story. Someone broke in to my dad's shop and burglarized thousands of dollars worth of tools, and then put there own lock on the door. It was a shiny lock, new. The police had no idea that someone had robbed my parents. Until my older brother discovered the new lock that have been placed on the door by the robbers.
  I ran from the camper and into the woods angry with everyone. That is when a wise man told me that I needed to let this anger go. The feeling of anger I had told everyone. It would get me no where. I need to wait and see what happened.
  So when every something goes bad in my life. Let say a friend turns on me or someone says something that hurts me I let that kind of stress go. I try to wait and see just how bad it is before chow-ing down on the bit of stress. The man that taught me that helped me more than he would everyone. I looked back on that talk and I can remember his eyes, they were like the eyes of an eagle. When it came time to name my son there was no other name that I could have given him that would have been more fitting that that of the Darrel Farnworth.
   That weekend he taught me that drinking beer didn’t make you a man. So I try to let things go, to let them be, until I find out what is really going on. Then make an informed decision on what to do next. As I get older I have every talked to my support group of friends and asked opinions on what to do. It helps if you don't make decisions that burn bridges, and build fences, until you know what to do.
   I guess I am just trying to get the point across to who ever is reading this, read it over and over until you do understand. It may make life a great deal better. I would also press upon my son to read this when he is older. Don’t let the little things that come against you, hurt you. There is a lot to be said for the saying, "Sticks and stones will break my bone and words will never hurt me.”  Just know tomorrow is another day that leads to the rest of your life.