Life is Not a Dr. Quinn Episode

          I was somewhere between nine and ten when I was nearly devoured by a team of sled dogs.

          My actual predicament might not have been as potentially lethal as I remember. My uncle in upstate New York raised sled dogs in addition to growing a garden roughly the size of a national reserve. If you left the back porch and wound through the trail between Cretaceous-sized squash and tiger lilies, you would end up at a pen with a team of gorgeous Siberian huskies. I'd been fascinated with huskies since seeing the wolf-dog on Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, and I would just sit and watch the dogs as they lazily blinked their blue eyes back at me.

          Can I just say that Hollywood has left me with completely unrealistic expectations of how humans and animals are supposed to relate? There's supposed to be this beautiful moment where Lassie communicates that Timmy's in the well, Beethoven stops the evil scientist, and Iron Will gets his dog team to beat the bald guy with the frosbite. Either way, whether it's Lassie, Benji, or the frickin' Incredible Journey, animals always manage to have this transcendent moment where they realize the need of the human and come to that person's aid.

          That instinct is fiction.

          I had one dog out of his individual pen and in the larger fenced-in area. The dog came up past my waist, and was not used to taking the instructions of a seventy-pound weakling. When it came time to put him back in his pen, he lazily blinked at me while I attempted to drag him.

I pondered this, then went to the cage of a white sled dog who I assumed was the leader because... well... a snow-white Siberian husky looked pretty badass. I crouched down and stared into the white dog's eyes. “You'll get him to go back in his pen, right?”

          Balto would have shooed the disobedient member back into his pen.

As soon as I opened the gate, the dogs went from Dr. Quinn to Jack London in half a second. The two dogs charged each other, snarling, yipping, and (in my young mind) attempting to kill each other. I waited for one of their jugulars to gush blood, like when Buck bested Spitz and took control of the pack.

I freaked out.

          And naturally let out another dog. Clearly, this dog would straighten out these other two. I'd seen this in every animal movie I'd ever watched.

          Stupid Hollywood.

          My uncle followed the noise of three dogs fighting while I clung to the back of the fence, frightened out of my mind. It took him about ten seconds to send every dog back to their pens, each one calmly blinking as if they hadn't been in a bared-teeth frenzy a few rapid heartbeats ago.

          I wish I could say my naivete died that day, but every so often, I still find myself trying to close doors with the Force or expecting supermarket shoppers to burst out into choreographed song and dance. Every so often, I want this twenty-one year old weakling to be able to control the sled dog. Every so often, I expect people to behave more like Balto and less like a real dog.

Cautionary Concentric Squiggles

          Right now I am pivoting between the cloudy skies through the window and the Weather Channel that announces in bold scrolling text that I should be on the lookout for a string of tornadoes that are currently decimating the area between me and where I need to be in eight hours. The map of the continental U.S. has a blob of concentric squiggles that vary from green, to yellow, to red, to purple at the heart of the storm. Guess where I am? I calculate my chances, weigh them against how badly I need to get to where I'm going, and decide to wait another day.

          Just a few days ago I'd been west of the blob, where no cautionary colors lurked, starting my drive from California to Virginia in the perfect West Coast weather. Two weeks earlier I had crossed a stage and been given a piece of paper for which I worked four years. Two weeks from now I will be diving into a summer of intensive training that I'm not sure I can handle. But right now I am poised— half-nostalgic, half-anxious—and my poise turns to paralysis.

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          The funny thing about roadtrips over five hours is that somewhere after you've gotten sick of listening to music, you hit this zen-like quality of reflection where your mind begins translating the scenery into thoughts, that fly by you as the terrain does. By the time I hit Utah, the cliffs and canyons translated to my past four years of college—a crazy, ever-changing landscape composed of sedimentary layers of fun and homework. My heart aches that after four years . . . hours . . . in Utah, I don't know when I'll be back. And if I were to go back, would it be the same? Or would it just be the same topography without any of my memories?

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          A few hours out of the desert, I was driving through snow and ice as I crested the mountain above Denver. Any time you drive down to Denver, you know that you've gone pretty high. As tractor trailers swerved to the side of the road, and skid marks showed signs of icy patches, my heart began to race. I focused on the road, trying to remember to slow down, not stomp on the brakes, and steer into the skid.          

          If I weren't so frightened, I'd be annoyed. I wanted to stop the car, run to the side of the mountain and yell into the dark that was spotted with snowflakes and city lights, “I'm on top of the world!”          

         I was over eleven-thousand feet high—my proverbial and literal mountain top and I couldn't enjoy it because I was terrified of what might happen next.

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          Once you've conquered the Rockies, it's a straight, flat shot from Colorado to Illinois. Once again you hit a trance where you seem to be driving the same stretch of road in an infinite loop. The road is clear, there are no surprises, and every few miles there's a sign advertising a farm with an 8,000 lb. Prairie dog or a five-legged cow.          

         I've given my share of friendly insults to the Midwest and its repetitive continuity of fields and sky. But this time, as endless cycles of redundant road passed by, I could feel myself calm down into a moment of clarity. I could see the road—it went for 951 straight miles between Denver and Decatur. This was manageable.

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         So now, here I am—poised between my moment of clarity and a string of unknown tornadoes. The cautionary concentric squiggles have waned to a light green, even though the sky rumbles that it's not quite through yet.          

         In Illinois, you can see the rain from miles away as it races toward you, building to a downpouring crescendo. Black clouds frame the snowglobe sky and I think of turning back, of waiting until I'm older, more experienced, and ready to handle these tornadoes.          

         Rain begins to blur the edges of the horizon. I calculate my chances, weigh them against how badly I need to get to where I'm going, and drive forward.  

There's No Sound in Space

            They all went to bed four hours ago, so of course they’re asleep.

The living room is a ghost town of abandoned laptops, Xbox controllers, and hoodies. I think this is the first time my apartment has been silent. No… quiet, not silent. The refrigerator hums, the air conditioner grumbles, and my brain, even at this early hour, is filled with a torrent of noise. Quiet is great, but it usually signifies sleep, and my Pavlovian mind can’t quite escape, so there I am, back in my loud and colorful dream that quiet had interrupted.

I jolt back into the silence—no, quiet—and I try to understand the stillness. The mattress creaks as my roommate rolls over in his sleep.

Outside my window, a bird chirps—not sings, just chirps. Birds sing for Annie Dillard, but for me they just make noises. It is amazing what you hear when the TV is off, and everyone is asleep. But when one thing goes silent, you just find another level of sound. I might not hear Master Chief destroying Covenant scum, but I can hear the fridge and the ceiling fan catch up on early morning gossip. Were I to renounce these technologies and flee to Nature, I doubt I would find silence amidst the buzzing, trickling, swaying noises.

And don’t even get me started on my mind—the least silent place of all. Michael Phelps would drown in my raging stream of consciousness.

Quiet takes too much energy. It’s terribly inconvenient, and worst of all, it is seen by our culture as the bastard child of inefficiency. But the human soul needs quiet.—needs to be still and know that God is God. Needs to unhook from the dopamine drips of their phones and ponder themselves.

Do I like who I am when all is quiet?

Quiet doesn’t let you pick and choose who you are, like mobile uploads, or status updates. Quiet takes a Polaroid of the real thing—it may be out of focus, or underdeveloped, but it is unmistakably you.

Rewind three years. It’s somewhere on a road between Santa Fe and Phoenix. The week has been long, and I sit, too exhausted for sleep, attempting to contort my body to the unforgiving structure of a fifteen-passenger van. I lean my head against the window, and by chance look up. Two seconds of looking, and I know I need to get out of that van as soon as possible.

The van has barely stopped moving by the time I am out on the side of the highway, staring up at the brightest web of stars I have ever seen. There's no sound in outer space. The stars never chitchat, never fill time with meaningless ramblings. In the gravel on the interstate shoulder, as tractor trailers roared by, my soul was as quiet as space.

Some people like to watch bugs, or look through microscopes. The tiny worlds they observe make them feel like a god. I don’t want to be God. Why would I want that kind of responsibility? I want to know that God is bigger than me—that there’s more to this universe than my problems. Who would want the pressure of being the center of the universe?

I hold up my thumb and block out a million worlds. I spread my hand and cover a billion more. All these, and I cannot cover every star without covering my own eyes. That kind of greatness gives perspective—a perspective that frees the soul from the nagging need to be in control. It’s an invitation to rest and just be.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. A regularly scheduled blackout for construction purposes leaves our campus dark for fifteen minutes. As the noisy light recedes, and my eyes adjust to the quietness of the dark, I see stars like I’d never seen before at school. On a good night, you can pick out a few planets, or Orion’s belt, but now the constellations are flooded in an ocean of stars. For a brief moment, I hear the quiet in my soul again. Under the stars, I am a man before his Maker. My ego, my problems, my fears that all swell in the noise of the day—they all shrink in the quiet.

So here I am—back in the living room—with constellations of kicked-off shoes, and the migratory noises of students driving to their early morning classes. And hard as I try, I can’t tune my soul back into quiet—the notes keep sounding sharp and overly taut. I lift my hand and cover the scattered shoes with my palm. My soul can be quiet anywhere. Why do I keep covering my eyes?

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On Driving a Minivan

          There are few experiences more humbling in the life of a teenage boy than driving a minivan. It’s not the inability to parallel park, or the complete unwieldiness that makes it such a humiliating experience—it’s that moment when you pull up to a stoplight, punk rock screaming out of your windows, and see the stares from the people next to you. It’s that moment when you’re walking out of work with a fellow employee who goes to his pimped out Mustang, while you fiddle with your minivan keys, because the clicker broke five years ago. It’s because nine out of ten homeschool moms agree that the minivan is the most practical vehicle for a mid-sized family.

          Practical. I hated that word. Practical isn’t sexy. Practical doesn’t purr while idling, or have a subwoofer that could double as a defibrillator. Practical is embarrassing.

          My minivan was a 1996 Dodge Caravan that was white before the paint started peeling. ’96 was a time before the DVD screens and seat-warmers made minivans luxury cruisers. No, ’96 was the year they just started putting two side doors on minivans instead of one. My family was pretty excited about that.

          The inside of my minivan was always a wreck—the CD player didn’t spit out the CD unless you stuck a pen into the slot while holding eject; the carpet had a giant stain courtesy of a Rt. 44 cherry slush, and the stuck locks made a loud grinding sound that frightened adults and amused small children. I put that car through a lot of grief—hours of roadtrips, two fender-benders, a speeding ticket, and one busted taillight.

          My minivan was like that family member that constantly embarrasses you, but you’ve been through so much, that you somehow look at it with a mixture of affection and ridicule. I slept in the backseat many times, drove with it from Arizona to Virginia, and even picked up my first date in that minivan.

          Memories are funny things—little landmines in your brain that are set off by the strangest things. This morning, I had a cup of PG Tips, and for a brief moment, I was no longer driving between Dayton and Chattanooga—I was on the back lawn of the Greatham L’Abri, taking one of two daily tea breaks, after chopping wood all morning. I’m not even sure I like the taste of that tea—I just know that every time I take a sip, I am back in that serene, uncomplicated memory.

          There was another time, between high school and college, I was traveling with an organization, teaching kids about state government. Every other week, I would leave my body wash at a host home, so I got in the habit of buying the cheapest brand WalMart sells (Irish Springs, original scent). Sophomore year of college, and several body wash scents later, I pick up the same bottle, and for hours I could not shake the memories of those crazy three months. Memories of cross-country roadtrips, and sleepless weeks spent in state capitols pretending to be in my mid-twenties in order to get past security guards (if you act confident and dress in a suit, you can get away with almost anything).

          They say that smell especially is linked to memory—the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, and has access to the amygdala, which processes emotion, and the hippocampus, which is responsible for associative learning. These, when combined with conditioned responses, produce memories connected to certain stimuli. Also, there is no Santa Claus.

          There’s a box in the shelf in my closet back home that I haven’t opened in a while. This tin used to house those sugar cookies with the little wrappers that usually get pushed to the back of potluck tables. Now it houses all the things that ten-year-old me thought was cool. There are birthday cards, lego pieces, and cheap plastic party favors. Every tiny object had significance, and I could still tell you why those were in there. There was my lucky reddish rock that I fished out of a stream at camp that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, and a bookmark from the library’s summer reading program (I had been the third fastest to complete their reading chart). What might look like a broken matchbox car to you was the fastest vehicle in the Offroads Dirt Racing Championship of ’99. Every thing that ten-year-old me valued was put in that box.

          There’s also a box for twelve-year-old me in the bookcase in my room at home. And fifteen-year-old me. And eighteen-year-old me. And stuck between my desk and bed in my dorm room, there’s one for almost twenty-one-year-old me.

          This summer, my minivan passed away. He kept stalling out, and after several attempts at resuscitation, we were told the worst—his transmission had given out. This van has been in my life since I was six. One day while I was at work, some men came by to dispose of the remains.

          Maybe I’m just sentimental, but I felt an affection for that dying piece of junk that I’d never felt while he was living. I wish I’d been less embarrassed of him in real life. I wish I’d taken better care of him, and made less soccer mom jokes. Because now that he’s gone … that’s it. He now exists in memory and photographs, and whatever mechanical organs were donated by the junkyard where he went.

          Every so often, I see another van just like it (that generation of minivans are like the Baby Boomers—not quite gone, but they’re on their way out). For just a moment, my amygdala and hippocampus fire, and I pull a memory out of my mental cookie tin.

And one day, I hope that my son will be forced to drive an ugly car that makes him realize that it’s not how you get somewhere that matters—it’s what goes in that box.

Brewing the Fountain of Youth

          There's something about a new city that brings out the Ponce de Leon in me. Exploring is not an option—it is a driving force that compels me to weave aimlessly, often circling back on myself because if Cortez didn't need a vistor's center map, then neither do I. That's what brought me to this sidewalk just outside the market in Charleston—the wanderlust that helped me imagine I had conquered this city and discovered my Fountain of Youth. The life-renewing water was still steaming hot, and contrary to its powers, it was black as death. Every conquistador, explorer, or treasure seeker has a goal in mind. Columbus wanted the Indies, Richard Byrd wanted the South Pole, and I wanted the best local coffee shop I could find.

          Coffee shops are like women—you find a good one and you never let go. I always feel a little unfaithful when I'm at another coffee shop. In my heart, I should be on the leather sofa of my favorite coffee shop located between an old bookstore and a pizza shop in downtown Chattanooga. But routine is the curse of the modern world, and so I continue exploring.

          Above the counter at one of the rivals in my love is a blackboard that probably gets redecorated every few days by a dropout art major with a penchant for anime. The generically termed “Turkish proverb” declares, “Coffee should be black as Hell, strong as death, and sweet as love.” Every word of this saying is true—your teeny-bopper, venti skim lite caramel frappe with extra whip is not coffee. Enjoy your milkshake, and come back when you can savor the aroma of a freshly ground, locally roasted blend that wafts steam like incense.

          We have stripped the magic from the little things—our coffee is a list of boxes down the sides of our cup that allow us to manipulate the constituent elements into our own bizarre, unholy creation while spouting Italian words as if we knew what “venti” even meant. We love control, routine, and manufactured individuality. Coffee is no longer holy—a marriage of coffee grounds baptized in steaming water. It's our five minute drive-thru, and there will be hell to pay if it's more than five.

          Coffee becomes a giant neon sign that people love to point at themselves. The college roommate that talks about his eighteen-cup all-nighter, the “don't talk to me until I've had my coffee” slackers, and the businessmen who feel more professional flashing their green siren cups everywhere. When did coffee become the means and not the end? We talk about it, flaunt it, and worship it only for what it can do for us. We claim we love coffee, but are slaves to our idolatry of efficiency. We go to our mega-coffee shops in order to receive the gospel of caffeine that we can control, and that we feel comfortable with.

          So here I am on a sidewalk in Charleston with a penitent heart. I'm guilty of the same idolatry—I enjoy the convenience of my grande double shot mocha no whip. I require no faith, no exploration, no new aspect of my caffeinated religion: I'd rather have my easily controlled drink. The beauty of Ponce de Leon is that he never found his Fountain, never gained eternal life, yet he stepped out in faith. I sip my quickly cooling house blend—a Eucharist of beans and water—and I feel reborn.

On a Mechanical Pencil

I’m not here to say that the mechanical pencil is the noblest of writing implements. I’m not here to extol its #2 merits, its 0.7 mm wide lead, or little plastic pocket clip. I’m not here to say that it writes more effectively, or in a prettier script, or in a way that cramps the hand less. That’s not the mechanical pencil’s style. The mechanical pencil is completely unpretentious. Unlike my oversized pen with a wooden monkey’s head that was my favorite in middle school, the mechanical pencil does not beg for attention through outrageous or impractical gimmicks. The mechanical pencil’s one intent is utility—it is designed to get the job done.

Mechanical pencils are a dime a dozen—well, not literally. They’re usually a dollar in the back to school bargain bins (which, instead of raising their prices, have conveniently cut the number of pencils per pack in half—but I digress). I go through a pack a semester, loaning them out with the air of a philanthropist, and sticking them in every drawer, pocket, messenger bag, or binder that will hold them. At the end of the year, they’re like sand after a beach trip—you discover them in everything.

And why not? The mechanical pencil needs nothing else. It is completely self-sufficient, unlike its Ticonderogan cousin who needs a sharpener the size of a Humvee in order to maintain its sharpness. I wish that I could be that low-maintenance—that no matter how much homework I write, all it takes is one or two clicks of the eraser, and I am just as sharp once again. Who needs this endless grind, the annoying shavings, and the likelihood that you’ll end up blunting your tip, or breaking your lead shortly after your sharpening?

But, like all things, perfection is an illusion. The mechanical pencil is not flawless. It breaks easily, it gets lost everywhere, and eventually it runs out of lead. There is no feeling more frustrating than frantically clicking a mechanical pencil, desperate for another inch of inspiration to complete an assignment, take notes, or bubble a few more scantron questions, but nothing comes out. It is a hopeless, empty feeling. Nobody expects their mechanical pencil to run out—but it always does, and at the worst possible time.

           I used to think everything that came from my monkey pen was inky inspiration. I didn’t need to write in pencil—why shouldn’t everything I write be a permanently inscribed tablet of my brilliance? That younger, nerdier version of myself used to proclaim to everyone that he was “going to be a writer,” as he churned out an amalgamation of short stories plagiarized from the pages of whatever genre to which he was currently addicted.

            But not anymore. Now, writing scares me. Not in the same way that snakes scare me, or dark water scares me, but in the way relationships scare me—that no matter how much attention and devotion you put into it, it may not love you back. That’s why I dislike writing in pen.

People that write in pen still unsettle me—from the community college dropout that swears he’s writing the next Lord of the Rings, to the Starbucks-sipping twenty-something that is “working on his screenplay.” When people write in pen, they think too highly of themselves—they pay more attention to their monkey pens than the words they write. They don’t see anything greater than themselves—they don’t marvel at anything other than their own brilliance. Without wonder, there is no true creation. Writing should instill us with wonder at the subject, and the power to catch that subject—to suspend that subject in time with words. Writing should fill us with amazement for all things other than our own cleverness.

Writing functions as a means to understand the world around us; to see ourselves as the source of this power is to raise a golden calf to our brilliance, without paying tribute to the many who came before us, and brought writing to where it is now. Writing demands the utmost humility and respect, for it is not an act from ourselves, but an act larger than ourselves, that we can engage in—a centuries-long conversation of which we are allowed a few moments.

But maybe I am trying too hard; after all, writing is a common tool, just as often used to write warning labels as Don Quixote. But like the man of La Mancha, I want something to be sacred—I desperately want the shaving bowl to be a helmet of legend, because if writing is just a means to an end, then something is terribly wrong. In a world of blogs, myspaces, and snappy statuses, I wish more people were illiterate, to keep them from profanely proclaiming their ability as writers.

To write is to create, and creation is a powerful, awe-inspiring thing. To create mimics the Divine—a mini-Genesis with unknown implications. Writing transcends the particulars and touches the universal; it allows us to connect our experience with the experiences of all humanity, something so powerful that I dare anyone to call this giant a windmill. Creation is a microcosm of God—an ability given to us as images of him.

Why would I write my life in pen? There’s no room for wonder to rearrange my words.

            But it’s terrifying to write in pencil—to know that all your words can be erased in a flurry of eraser bits. The mechanical pencil’s life is a desperate race to express all three sticks of lead before it gets lost in a messenger bag, or dropped behind a desk. It is a thankless, uninspiring, terrifying existence. No one wants to be lost with two and a half sticks of things to say.

But we should learn from this humblest of writing utensils. We never look at classroom notes and admire the reasoning of the mechanical pencil. We never examine the shading on a legal pad doodle and compliment the technique of the drawing implement. The mechanical pencil is never praised, and even if it wanted to, it shouldn’t. The goal of the mechanical pencil is not to draw attention to its superior features, or amazing design. In the end, it’s a cheap piece of plastic with an eraser that always is used up before the lead is, because it produces more mistakes than brilliance. The glory of the mechanical pencil is not in himself, but in the attention he draws to the one who uses him to create.

Ambiguity can be beautiful

Blogs are hardly something new to me.


I am old enough to remember the modblog vs. xanga wars of the early 00's.


I remember the Dan Rathers scandal that made blogs mainstream.


I am part of a generation that considers blogs, or anything else over 140 characters to be old school.


So what is the purpose of this blog? As I graduate, I realize my community of writers is shrinking. I can no longer hand a friend a paper while in class, or participate in class workshops. Facebook is a soulless place, Tumblr is ignored by most, and I shut down my Twitter after a week.


So here we are--my latest venture, where I hope to regularly post my writing, primarily in the genre of the familiar essay. Some of these have been presented before through various mediums, but I hope to sprinkle a few new essays that I have been mulling over for the past few months.


I hope you enjoy--feel free to share.


-Elijah