Lately, life teaches me that absolutes are far from absolute (well... besides death and taxes, pesky physics, math, etc). Life in general is so fuzzy, in motion — the present made up of moments stacked liked train cars. The tracks lead away from the past, meander to the future.
I can't determine if we're the tracks, or the train.
Monday, December 17, 2012
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Courage Always Wins
I have a little motto going: courage always wins.
It's about looking fear in the eye, not blinking.
Not knowing the outcome — not needing to.
I own the last word; it belongs to me.
Fear can't leave unanswered questions;
all the smudges on whichever lens I view the world.
Dared in that instant. Tried it. Wrote it. Said it.
Walked in/out. Asked. Answered boldly. Fought for it.
Loved.
Success. Failure. Living.
It's about looking fear in the eye, not blinking.
Not knowing the outcome — not needing to.
I own the last word; it belongs to me.
Fear can't leave unanswered questions;
all the smudges on whichever lens I view the world.
Dared in that instant. Tried it. Wrote it. Said it.
Walked in/out. Asked. Answered boldly. Fought for it.
Loved.
Success. Failure. Living.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
More Daring
Sitting in a Starbucks, writing this before my battery fails. I've been learning about vulnerability, and wanting more of it in my life. There's a really great book out called Daring Greatly, by Brene Brown.
In a nutshell, it's about: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. It's been an eye opener. Thanks to @LisaDJenkins for recommending the book. I wholeheartedly recommend it, too.
As a single-again-single person, I'm struggling to reconcile where I went earlier in 2012. I felt truly seen for the first time ever, by eyes wanting to see the whole me. It was unexpected, and nurtured me as a newly divorced guy. I took to the reality like a thirsty man takes to water in the desert. It tasted so sweet, and I felt renewed. I valued it greatly, perhaps too much so. And now that gaze, her gaze, has shifted sharply away from me. We weren't in the same place, so it ended. Tragically, we can't even speak.
Something rare was shared in that place. Cherished by me. It's easy to go back to my safe place, one where disengaging from people, feeling defensive, and doubtful of them feels more "correct," but couldn't be more wrong. To hide and withhold again. Getting back to that realness — to total transparency — seems impossible, but if I'm to learn anything from the book, vulnerability is still the goal, and it's not a bad thing. It's still about having the courage to be yourself with whoever you're with. Friends, family, strangers, new relationships, and all the rest.
Can I truly be myself ever again with someone? I'll never know unless I decide vulnerability is worth it in the end.
In a nutshell, it's about: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead. It's been an eye opener. Thanks to @LisaDJenkins for recommending the book. I wholeheartedly recommend it, too.
As a single-again-single person, I'm struggling to reconcile where I went earlier in 2012. I felt truly seen for the first time ever, by eyes wanting to see the whole me. It was unexpected, and nurtured me as a newly divorced guy. I took to the reality like a thirsty man takes to water in the desert. It tasted so sweet, and I felt renewed. I valued it greatly, perhaps too much so. And now that gaze, her gaze, has shifted sharply away from me. We weren't in the same place, so it ended. Tragically, we can't even speak.
Something rare was shared in that place. Cherished by me. It's easy to go back to my safe place, one where disengaging from people, feeling defensive, and doubtful of them feels more "correct," but couldn't be more wrong. To hide and withhold again. Getting back to that realness — to total transparency — seems impossible, but if I'm to learn anything from the book, vulnerability is still the goal, and it's not a bad thing. It's still about having the courage to be yourself with whoever you're with. Friends, family, strangers, new relationships, and all the rest.
Can I truly be myself ever again with someone? I'll never know unless I decide vulnerability is worth it in the end.
Friday, November 30, 2012
Slow Burn
This piece appeared first in TOSKA MAGAZINE
October 19, 2012 / Nonfiction, Volume One | Issue Two
by Christopher Ripley
Smokey spring air nipped at my nose, ripened with curious stink. Not far, an old man chewed on a thick cigar. He sat perched on the rear bumper of his car. I headed his way.
My neighborhood consisted of old men and their silver haired brides. They glided about Ninth Avenue in giant spit-shined cars named Lincoln, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. Not many kids around so we talked some, the old men and I.
Mr. Banks wore red suspenders drooped over a white T-shirt, the straps each holding up their halves of faded blue trousers. Pounds clung to his belly like years, giving him roundness. The retired fireman lived with his wife, two sons, and a daughter in a modest home. His house was four doors down the street from mine.
I asked him if he was ever a fireman. I knew.
“Long time ago,” he said. The old man breathed deep like a prized steer. Air roiled through his nostrils. He grumbled, raising the cigar to his lips for a pull, stared back with grim etched in his face, then exhaled into the wind. He’d eaten smoke for a living, before. My lungs were spared.
“Is that what you want kid? Be a fireman?” He lifted an eyebrow and took another hit on the cigar. His face was massive, with a large nose underneath a pair of intense eyes. Day-old stubble, grayed and grizzled, sprouted up on leathery cheeks and down his neck. He reminded me of John Wayne.
“A fireman like you someday,” I told him.
His chest rumbled like a train engine, his smoked-filled lungs caught unprepared for laughter. Labored coughs followed. He gathered himself after a few booming hacks.
“Not for everyone, kid.”
Mr. Banks’ yard and house drank in the morning sunlight, angling in from the Southeast around and below a canopy of tall, leafy oak trees. His open garage door looked like the entrance to a cave. I knew the fire helmet was inside, hidden like a rare treasure in the shadows.
I meant what I had said. As a five-year-old boy, all I could think about was growing up to be a fireman. Five Little Firemen, a Little Golden Book by Margaret Wise Brown, was my favorite. Mom read me the story so often the cardboard cover was lost somewhere in my youth. Friends and I put out fires in the neighborhood like real firemen, dispatched by imaginations. Alarms, sirens, three and four big wheel serpentines rolled down the sidewalk over and over again. We saved Ninth Avenue from the flames several times every afternoon. And we’d return to the station house after a tough job, battered and fatigued, backing into our spots all in a row against my garage door.
Like real firemen, we’d gather buckets and soap and scrub the smudges and memories of the last fire from our minds and our fire trucks. We retold the close calls, heroic actions, and lives saved. In the middle of washing, or drying, or just getting started, the imaginary alarm would go off – like always. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, one of us would shout. We’d speed off again to save the neighborhood. Like real firemen.
Mr. Banks’ cigar had burned down to a small nub in his hand, to not much of anything. He syphoned precious sips from it like they might be his last, pinching it by the scruff between his middle finger and thumb. He held it like a man; not the way women held cigarettes. A quick tap sent ash cascading to the driveway with a hushed plop. Exposed, the red hot tip blazed a short path to his flesh, closer and closer still. The end reminded me of live coals beneath the flames of a campfire. And I was afraid the fireman might get burned.
He didn’t care, knew what he was doing.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, stared at my feet, and the silence overtook us. An old man and a boy struggling to communicate. Though we tried, our words sloshed like water from buckets. He seemed uninterested with me, wanted to return to whatever old men did to fill their days.
Anxious, I asked about the helmet. “Can I see it?” pointing to the shadows over his shoulder.
“The fire helmet?” he knew why I was there. “A closer look, sure. I don’t let kids put it on, because it’s heavy, and dirty, and I’d hate to send you home with any scrapes or bruises.” He tossed a quick look back towards my house. Such a gentle old man.
He took a knee and stabbed out what was left of the cigar against the driveway pavement, a small sacrifice for my prize, his eventual return to peace. Getting to his feet wasn’t easy. He managed, though, and turned for the one-car garage.
The gnarled husk smoldered at my feet. Sputtering smoke wafted, but rather unceremoniously. I wanted to inspect it, kick it, maybe even pick it up.
“Don’t touch that,” he said, reading my mind. “You’ll get burned.” He vanished behind the car into the shadows.
I couldn’t see Mr. Banks, but I could hear his hulking breaths. Clutter of all sorts stirred from slumber. The crack of a falling broomstick hit the floor. A heavy box scraped over polished concrete. Pails clanked against a wooden bench. Plastic containers rattled, some with nuts, others with screws. He grumbled at all the dusty ghosts with contempt. A lifetime’s worth of squared-away junk, but junk nevertheless. No sooner he emerged again, trophy in hand, blowing on the large brim in the back and thumbing the insignia on the front. He regarded it for a moment, reflecting.
“Don’t put it on,” he said, “just hold it.”
The fire helmet was charcoal black, dusty and big. Heavy like a gallon of milk. I measured everything against the weight of milk. I was mesmerized by his fire helmet; heroes wore fire helmets. It was like Superman’s cape, or the Lone Ranger’s mask.
I asked him if he was ever the chief.
“No.”
I told him chiefs wore white helmets.
He told me that was right.
I asked him why.
“Because they’re the smartest,” he said, tapping his head as he said it.
His words made sense to me, because I watched ‘Emergency,’ and wanted to be a fireman like Johnny Gage and Roy Desoto on TV. And like my friend the retired fireman who lived four doors down the street from me.
He faded, would spend less time out front under his oak trees talking to kids like me. The cigar smoke remained, though, ever present and tinged with memory. He was still there. I knew. Talks about firemen would come to mind, him and his dusty fire helmet. He simply vanished into the fabric of our neighborhood, gone from the forefront of awareness, somewhere in a smoke-filled haze over Ninth Avenue.
The old man battled dementia. A slow burn. It consumes like fire, absorbs whole, grows by destruction, and digests whatever needed for fuel. Fuel like a life. A reputation. A legacy of helping people escape the heat. But himself unable to escape the flames within.
Those standing with him stood too close, witnessed dementia’s final act played out. They would burn with the husband, father, neighbor, and fireman. They would burn with Mr. Banks. He took his own life, but not before killing his wife and maiming two of his adult children.
The revelation was heavy, freakish, happening where the dusty fire helmet hung in the garage. I felt burned, too.
Idaho native Christopher Ripley got a journalism degree in 1992 from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. His work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction #42 and #44, Format: micro essay. Check out his blog at talentdmrripley.blogspot.com.
October 19, 2012 / Nonfiction, Volume One | Issue Two
by Christopher Ripley
Smokey spring air nipped at my nose, ripened with curious stink. Not far, an old man chewed on a thick cigar. He sat perched on the rear bumper of his car. I headed his way.
My neighborhood consisted of old men and their silver haired brides. They glided about Ninth Avenue in giant spit-shined cars named Lincoln, Chrysler, and Chevrolet. Not many kids around so we talked some, the old men and I.
Mr. Banks wore red suspenders drooped over a white T-shirt, the straps each holding up their halves of faded blue trousers. Pounds clung to his belly like years, giving him roundness. The retired fireman lived with his wife, two sons, and a daughter in a modest home. His house was four doors down the street from mine.
I asked him if he was ever a fireman. I knew.
“Long time ago,” he said. The old man breathed deep like a prized steer. Air roiled through his nostrils. He grumbled, raising the cigar to his lips for a pull, stared back with grim etched in his face, then exhaled into the wind. He’d eaten smoke for a living, before. My lungs were spared.
“Is that what you want kid? Be a fireman?” He lifted an eyebrow and took another hit on the cigar. His face was massive, with a large nose underneath a pair of intense eyes. Day-old stubble, grayed and grizzled, sprouted up on leathery cheeks and down his neck. He reminded me of John Wayne.
“A fireman like you someday,” I told him.
His chest rumbled like a train engine, his smoked-filled lungs caught unprepared for laughter. Labored coughs followed. He gathered himself after a few booming hacks.
“Not for everyone, kid.”
Mr. Banks’ yard and house drank in the morning sunlight, angling in from the Southeast around and below a canopy of tall, leafy oak trees. His open garage door looked like the entrance to a cave. I knew the fire helmet was inside, hidden like a rare treasure in the shadows.
I meant what I had said. As a five-year-old boy, all I could think about was growing up to be a fireman. Five Little Firemen, a Little Golden Book by Margaret Wise Brown, was my favorite. Mom read me the story so often the cardboard cover was lost somewhere in my youth. Friends and I put out fires in the neighborhood like real firemen, dispatched by imaginations. Alarms, sirens, three and four big wheel serpentines rolled down the sidewalk over and over again. We saved Ninth Avenue from the flames several times every afternoon. And we’d return to the station house after a tough job, battered and fatigued, backing into our spots all in a row against my garage door.
Like real firemen, we’d gather buckets and soap and scrub the smudges and memories of the last fire from our minds and our fire trucks. We retold the close calls, heroic actions, and lives saved. In the middle of washing, or drying, or just getting started, the imaginary alarm would go off – like always. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, one of us would shout. We’d speed off again to save the neighborhood. Like real firemen.
Mr. Banks’ cigar had burned down to a small nub in his hand, to not much of anything. He syphoned precious sips from it like they might be his last, pinching it by the scruff between his middle finger and thumb. He held it like a man; not the way women held cigarettes. A quick tap sent ash cascading to the driveway with a hushed plop. Exposed, the red hot tip blazed a short path to his flesh, closer and closer still. The end reminded me of live coals beneath the flames of a campfire. And I was afraid the fireman might get burned.
He didn’t care, knew what he was doing.
I shoved my hands in my pockets, stared at my feet, and the silence overtook us. An old man and a boy struggling to communicate. Though we tried, our words sloshed like water from buckets. He seemed uninterested with me, wanted to return to whatever old men did to fill their days.
Anxious, I asked about the helmet. “Can I see it?” pointing to the shadows over his shoulder.
“The fire helmet?” he knew why I was there. “A closer look, sure. I don’t let kids put it on, because it’s heavy, and dirty, and I’d hate to send you home with any scrapes or bruises.” He tossed a quick look back towards my house. Such a gentle old man.
He took a knee and stabbed out what was left of the cigar against the driveway pavement, a small sacrifice for my prize, his eventual return to peace. Getting to his feet wasn’t easy. He managed, though, and turned for the one-car garage.
The gnarled husk smoldered at my feet. Sputtering smoke wafted, but rather unceremoniously. I wanted to inspect it, kick it, maybe even pick it up.
“Don’t touch that,” he said, reading my mind. “You’ll get burned.” He vanished behind the car into the shadows.
I couldn’t see Mr. Banks, but I could hear his hulking breaths. Clutter of all sorts stirred from slumber. The crack of a falling broomstick hit the floor. A heavy box scraped over polished concrete. Pails clanked against a wooden bench. Plastic containers rattled, some with nuts, others with screws. He grumbled at all the dusty ghosts with contempt. A lifetime’s worth of squared-away junk, but junk nevertheless. No sooner he emerged again, trophy in hand, blowing on the large brim in the back and thumbing the insignia on the front. He regarded it for a moment, reflecting.
“Don’t put it on,” he said, “just hold it.”
The fire helmet was charcoal black, dusty and big. Heavy like a gallon of milk. I measured everything against the weight of milk. I was mesmerized by his fire helmet; heroes wore fire helmets. It was like Superman’s cape, or the Lone Ranger’s mask.
I asked him if he was ever the chief.
“No.”
I told him chiefs wore white helmets.
He told me that was right.
I asked him why.
“Because they’re the smartest,” he said, tapping his head as he said it.
His words made sense to me, because I watched ‘Emergency,’ and wanted to be a fireman like Johnny Gage and Roy Desoto on TV. And like my friend the retired fireman who lived four doors down the street from me.
He faded, would spend less time out front under his oak trees talking to kids like me. The cigar smoke remained, though, ever present and tinged with memory. He was still there. I knew. Talks about firemen would come to mind, him and his dusty fire helmet. He simply vanished into the fabric of our neighborhood, gone from the forefront of awareness, somewhere in a smoke-filled haze over Ninth Avenue.
The old man battled dementia. A slow burn. It consumes like fire, absorbs whole, grows by destruction, and digests whatever needed for fuel. Fuel like a life. A reputation. A legacy of helping people escape the heat. But himself unable to escape the flames within.
Those standing with him stood too close, witnessed dementia’s final act played out. They would burn with the husband, father, neighbor, and fireman. They would burn with Mr. Banks. He took his own life, but not before killing his wife and maiming two of his adult children.
The revelation was heavy, freakish, happening where the dusty fire helmet hung in the garage. I felt burned, too.
Idaho native Christopher Ripley got a journalism degree in 1992 from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. His work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction #42 and #44, Format: micro essay. Check out his blog at talentdmrripley.blogspot.com.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Weather Guy
Weather guy forecasts what's ahead
A prediction wrapped in a promise
A possibility in front of you
A truth conceived, a plan made
You believe he's right, or wrong
A forecast is not a promise after all
What if he's wrong? It's possible.
Sometimes, weather guy is wrong
He's often wrong, in fact
He's often not exactly right, you know
You trust weather guy, you plan
His intention not to mislead
Hard to predict, weather
Love, even harder
A swelling heart and buckets of sunshine
for several days, weather guy says
But you can only see rain
A prediction wrapped in a promise
A possibility in front of you
A truth conceived, a plan made
You believe he's right, or wrong
A forecast is not a promise after all
What if he's wrong? It's possible.
Sometimes, weather guy is wrong
He's often wrong, in fact
He's often not exactly right, you know
You trust weather guy, you plan
His intention not to mislead
Hard to predict, weather
Love, even harder
A swelling heart and buckets of sunshine
for several days, weather guy says
But you can only see rain
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Reinventing Self
Clichés like these come to mind when people start talking about riding motorcycles.
All those apply to me, too, more even; but the reinvention of self is really the coolest thing so far about riding. There's this grown-man-kid-inside-of-me grinning ear to ear behind the helmet, loving every second of the experience. Hot, cold, rain, wind, my senses are alive. And that's not a bad thing at all.
When people learn I bought a motorcycle the reaction is usually something like: "Really?" Not the exciting "really?" but the one where people are slightly befuddled. Like I got my nipples pierced, or joined a cult. All I did was buy a motorcycle, but to them the purchase was unexpected for a guy like me, or something out of character.
"You can't!" my older sister said. "I won't let you." She flat out told me I couldn't get a motorcycle. Carrie, a senior insurance adjuster, works claims and has seen photographs, "horrible photographs" from motorcycle accidents. "People lose limbs!" I asked her if she's seen bad car accidents, and if I should avoid driving cars too. "It's different!"
Is it? She cares about me. That's what I hear.
Mom supports my decision but I can tell it kind of bugs her. A strained smile creases her face when I talk about riding, the proverbial "that's nice, dear" in her voice. Mom sat with me in the ICU after my stroke. Motorcycle enthusiasm runs counter to a mother's instinct, experience. Okay, so she's not a fan either.
Dad jokes, kids, ribs me. He wasn't thrilled either, at first. But he's a hard one to gauge. The man has a natural aversion to passions outside of work, and fund-raising for the local college (successful at both, actually). But nothing really stirs his soul, like fishing, or traveling, or creating stuff. He has an RV and he camps in it with his bride/cook a handful of nights in the summer. Dad just wants a pile of paperbacks and a pack of cheap cigarillos, and to enjoy both while sitting in the forest some place close to work. He's a work hard, hardly play type of guy. So my motorcycle is something he probably doesn't "get" or understand the need for.
My kids think it's cool, my son especially. His friends ride in a dirt patch by our house and he's dying to try it. Motorcycling is something we can do together, I've concluded. Bonding with my kids matters to me as much as anything else. My oldest daughter is okay with it, too. Her boyfriend rides super cross after all. My middle daughter asks questions all the time, and can't wait to go for a ride when I'm legally able to provide such amusement park thrills. It's funny, my daughters' friends' reaction to the news was like, "You're dad?!? He got a motorcycle?!?"
He did. And he feels reinvented. He feels reimagined in a profound way. And he'll wrap up this blog post in the third person. He's not just one thing, or a couple of boring things. He's many things, vibrant and not boring at all.
- The wind in my face
- The open road
- Freedom
- Tiny gas fill-ups
All those apply to me, too, more even; but the reinvention of self is really the coolest thing so far about riding. There's this grown-man-kid-inside-of-me grinning ear to ear behind the helmet, loving every second of the experience. Hot, cold, rain, wind, my senses are alive. And that's not a bad thing at all.
When people learn I bought a motorcycle the reaction is usually something like: "Really?" Not the exciting "really?" but the one where people are slightly befuddled. Like I got my nipples pierced, or joined a cult. All I did was buy a motorcycle, but to them the purchase was unexpected for a guy like me, or something out of character."You can't!" my older sister said. "I won't let you." She flat out told me I couldn't get a motorcycle. Carrie, a senior insurance adjuster, works claims and has seen photographs, "horrible photographs" from motorcycle accidents. "People lose limbs!" I asked her if she's seen bad car accidents, and if I should avoid driving cars too. "It's different!"
Is it? She cares about me. That's what I hear.
Mom supports my decision but I can tell it kind of bugs her. A strained smile creases her face when I talk about riding, the proverbial "that's nice, dear" in her voice. Mom sat with me in the ICU after my stroke. Motorcycle enthusiasm runs counter to a mother's instinct, experience. Okay, so she's not a fan either.
Dad jokes, kids, ribs me. He wasn't thrilled either, at first. But he's a hard one to gauge. The man has a natural aversion to passions outside of work, and fund-raising for the local college (successful at both, actually). But nothing really stirs his soul, like fishing, or traveling, or creating stuff. He has an RV and he camps in it with his bride/cook a handful of nights in the summer. Dad just wants a pile of paperbacks and a pack of cheap cigarillos, and to enjoy both while sitting in the forest some place close to work. He's a work hard, hardly play type of guy. So my motorcycle is something he probably doesn't "get" or understand the need for.
My kids think it's cool, my son especially. His friends ride in a dirt patch by our house and he's dying to try it. Motorcycling is something we can do together, I've concluded. Bonding with my kids matters to me as much as anything else. My oldest daughter is okay with it, too. Her boyfriend rides super cross after all. My middle daughter asks questions all the time, and can't wait to go for a ride when I'm legally able to provide such amusement park thrills. It's funny, my daughters' friends' reaction to the news was like, "You're dad?!? He got a motorcycle?!?"
He did. And he feels reinvented. He feels reimagined in a profound way. And he'll wrap up this blog post in the third person. He's not just one thing, or a couple of boring things. He's many things, vibrant and not boring at all.
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