Metaphor

Saturday morning I put my 12-year-old boy on a plane. With him went two teddy bears, an iPod filled with heavy metal music, several comic books, his summer reading and a box of Swedish fish. He cried a little when it was time to go, excitement turning to a touch of worry, his last hugs before boarding the tightest ever. Later he would tell me that he calmed himself down by tricking himself into thinking that his mother and I were just a few rows ahead on the plane.

The jet pulled away from the walkway and my heart jerked. The plane taxied slowly, took a right and disappeared behind the terminal. My heart pounded. The black jet with the Atlanta Falcons logo raced into view on a far runway, nose up and wheels leaving the ground, and my heart cracked. I watched the plane jump and arc out over Boston Harbor, southbound and climbing, receding to a speck, taking my baby boy with it--and also carrying away the last hint of the illusion that I have a baby boy anymore at all.

Coronary

There were going to be pictures with this food-based entry but, tell you the truth, I got a little embarrassed. But not enough to not at least write about it.

I was having a guy night with myself. The girls were gone for the evening. I had rented Kick-Ass. And all day, for some reason, I had this food thought in my head. In the morning I had taken out two small pieces of steak--little sirloins, very tender and tasty. I became hooked on the idea of piling them on top of french fries and attempting to kill both foods by smothering them under a blanket of cheese.

Can you feel your arteries clogging already?

The steak was rubbed with Adobo seasoning, which has come to be my go-to seasoning base for just about everything. When you get right down to it, it's just a seasoned salt. But it's tasty. The steaks went on the grill. Into the oven went not just french fries, but sweet potato fries which, as we should all rightly know, are a blessing from God. How there was life before sweet potato fries I may never know.

Of course, that wasn't enough. It all needed some heat. So on went the better part of a small can of diced green chiles.  Now I had a tiny mountain of green, brown and orange. Then I cheesed the living bajeezus out of it and shoved it under the broiler for five minutes. This because melty cheese, as we should all rightly know, is a blessing from God.

So many blessings, so little time, right?

There, then, was my manly food creation--something akin to a big plate of spicy cheese fries, but with the meaty gift of steak hiding below. And with a cold barley-pop after a hot day at a local fair--along with the nothin'-but-testosterone fanboy geekness of Kick-Ass--I was all set to be a Guy Alone.

Okay...just one photo. One:

Bon appetit!

Book

So there it is. I've had it for a couple of weeks now. On my second foray into a Borders, I found it. Like before, there was some choosiness involved. I handled it, ran my fingers across the faux alligator-skin texture. It felt ... acceptable. It wasn't blandly smooth like the others, but it was still reasonably plain. I am a fairly plain person. Dark colors, no patterns if I can help it.

I held it in my hand like a textbook, spine in my palm, fingers curled up the face. I walked around the store with it tucked there, judging the way it came along with me as I looked at books I wasn't planning to buy. (I love books, but I hate owning them. If I read a book once, the chance that I'll go back and read it again is slim since I already know what's going to happen, so the expense seems a little pointless--especially since I can go to the library and get the same experience for free.) I wandered. I liked the way the book felt in my grip. I could see myself taking it along to a park or the beach or on a car ride, pen tucked between its pages, ready for inspiration to strike. It wouldn't weigh me down. It would barely draw attention with its unassuming blackness. Sure, that textured cover might draw the eye, but it wouldn't shout, Look! Look at me! I'm an AUTHOR and I'm WRITING!

Which would be bad. No shouting, please.

Convinced that I had found The One, I bought it and headed out. I was pleased. I had taken that step, admittedly small, toward getting my writer back. But John, you ask, and rightly so, did you then use it?

O, you astute reader.

I did. The picture at right was taken during my son's karate class. This was the test I was waiting for. An hour-plus to kill. Would I once again dive into the puzzling depths of the game Zuma on my phone, or would I go to the car, break out the new journal, and whip out some sort of pithy thoughtflow?

Having the picture right there sort of kills the suspense, doesn't it?

That's me writing the "Bounty" entry. I dropped back into that handwriting groove sitting there in the dojo and scrawled my way through three full pages. The pen scraped beautifully across the page as I fired off line after line in my relatively indecipherable handwriting which, I was once told, "looks like an axe murderer's."

Axe murdering is so gauche. Not my style. But I digress.

It was nice. Even the hand cramp that I predicted would come. Even the way the side of my hand raked across the bottom of the page as I moved through that last line, so into the flow of the thing that I didn't want to stop. It was the feeling of writing, the core visceral act of the thing and I was doing it. A few days later I broke it out again to jot down notes for a music review. I wrote, said the writer, in my book.

I admit that the book has stayed in my bag for a couple of weeks. But my bag's always with me, so my book's always with me and there will be no runaway Muses should they happen by. I'll just take out my black fake leather alligator-skin journal, twenty bucks at Borders, flip it open to a clean white page and trap them right there between the thin grey lines.

Said the writer.

Heat

There is just something about the first breath you take in a sauna. Your body's not aware quite yet that the air has changed. Your skin certainly feels it, but nothing else has quite registered. The heat hasn't pervaded you yet. Then you breathe. If you breathe in through your mouth, you feel it immediately in your chest. The air is thicker with the heat. It doesn't ease down into your lungs the right way. It moves slower. If you breathe in through your nose, you feel it, the heat rasping across the membranes in a way that lets you know that the whole mouth-breathing thing is a considerably better idea. Either way, you're aware that something purgative has begun, and all you need to do is let it happen.

I love saunas for just that reason. Physically and metaphysically, 20 minutes in an arid cedar sauna draws out toxins. Sweat beads on your skin and every drop takes something away. Long, slow breaths pull from the inside, every exhalation lightening your soul just a bit. Alone in a sauna, there's nothing to do but think. So I think of the things I need to release, the weights and poisons I let seep into my soul during the day. I breathe them out, let them evaporate in the heat. I take in another hot, cleansing breath and do it again. I watch the sweat fall to the boards, every drop a moment I can do without. They hit, burst, fade. I pour more water on the stones to increase the heat to hurry the cleansing along.

The first time I took a sauna was at a friend's uncle's house on Lake Boone in Hudson, MA. The sauna was built on a concrete slab above a dock. It was wood-fired and it got plenty hot. The joy of it was that you'd sit and schivtz in the sauna for 20, then run like hell out the door, down the steps, onto the dock and dive into the lake. If you turned and came up quickly enough you could see the steam rising from where you went in. You'd climb out and back for another round. After two or three runs, you'd lather up with soap, maybe some shampoo in your hair, and take one more dive. I don't think I've ever slept as well as I did after that first sauna, and I'm pretty sure my skin squeaked, I was so clean.

Now I take my heat once a week or so at the local Y. We only recently joined and I'm trying to get my money's worth. I work out a bit first--far less than I should--but I know I'm really just there for my time in the heat. I'm there for the sweat-meditation, for time to reach into myself, time to let the dark stuff out. The last time there I could feel my breathing change. I could feel it clearing a space within, opening, all save for one tight, solid ball in the center of my chest. And since you can't fire off a good soul-clearing primal scream in a YMCA sauna without raising a bit of alarm, I recognized it for what it was, named it and accepted it. I know it's just a matter of time before the heat melts it away.

That's what saunas are for.

Random

For the sake of saying anything:

No one told me watching your kids grow up is hard. A little heads-up would have been good.

Fried sage leaves. Try them. Make a chiffonade, sautee them in butter and don't let them burn. Tonight they went into a relish of farm-fresh tomato, grilled onion, and dill. Planning to try it with angel hair pasta, pancetta and parmesan.

You should be listening to my podcast. Yes, the music's odd, but some of it is quite beautiful.

"Bob's Date" continues to get bookings, and they continue to thrill me. Meanwhile, someone finally licensed plays (That Thing and First Time for Anything) out of the Smith & Kraus anthologies. I was starting to worry that getting them published was like pulling a "Cask of Amontillado" on them. (For the love of God, Montressor!)

I should get back to work on a play. Then again, I'm quite enjoying the podcasts and reviews.

Weather's getting cooler. Soon I'll spend nights sitting on the deck in a sweatshirt and shorts, saying nothing and listening deeply. Or, at least, I hope I will.

I have deleted at least three lines/paragraphs in this post already. Wouldn't you love to know what they were, now that I've mentioned it?

Tired now. Thanks for indulging. The next one might even have meaning.

Day.

Sunday started the way I wanted it to. The girls still asleep and me on the deck, barefoot in shorts with a cup of my best attempt at making decent coffee. Sitting in a dew-slicked plastic Adirondack chair with a towel draped over it, facing east to watch the sun ease over the treetops. Breathing in the fading stillness, listening to a jay squawk his dominance over smaller birds. Bees behind me snacking on nectar, sometimes circling me to announce that I was inside their perimeter and they weren't all that pleased. Patiently listening to the world waking around me, a slow increase in traffic out on the street, a plane cutting a razorline across the sky, a voice indecipherable in the distance. A hawk winged past, just above the gable of the house. I could see the mottled detail on her feathers.

Me, coffee, the cool air, and for a little while, a shot at some inner stillness.

Sunday.