Zahn Does It Again with Scoundrels

I try to keep my office decor eclectic and inviting, with a personal touch and nostalgic aura that would disarm even the most surely of guests*. Aside from being known as the guy who stands at his desk, I’ve also cultivated a reputation around our publishing company as being the guy with the cereal box collection and the guy who tapes random articles and stories to his door.

The stories come and go. One week it was the now infamous “Death Star Petition.” Last week it was my review of McDonald’s Grilled Onion Cheddar burger for The Impulsive Buy. But for the different comings and going on my door, I always make sure to keep one piece of paper taped up.

It’s a letter I received in seventh grade. I remember the day I received it like it was yesterday. I was in class — ok, so I can’t remember which class — when the nefarious intercom buzzed into our classroom from the school office. The secretary on the other line called my name with the five words no 12-year old worth his prepubescent awkwardness wishes to hear. Report to the Principal’s office.

Even before the prerequisite “ummmhhhh” arose from my classmates, my mind had already begun to replay the previous hours and days of school. Rewinding through every conversation and interaction, I couldn’t for the life of me venture a guess as to what my transgression was, leading me to the only assumption applicable for a twelve-year-old in said situation: I was dead. Dead freaking meat.

Except I wasn’t. What initially sparked my concern for being the second most horrible thing in my day** ended up being the kind of experience a person never forgets.

The reason for my summon was a letter from science fiction writer Timothy Zahn. The author who essentially launched the renaissance of Star Wars fiction known as the Expanded Universe with his 1991 novel Heir to the Empire, Zahn also happened to be my writing idol. As it was back in those days of “grade level” or “challenge” reading classes, I had, at some point, been identified as exceptional when it came to words and my ability to write them, read them, and manipulate them in order to make myself appear far more intelligent than I really was***, and had thus been granted an independent project for my reading requirement. I decided I wanted that project to be writing science fiction novella. Aside from actually writing the thing, the person managing this little form of a get-out-of-class-free card made sure I researched the steps of publishing. Psh. Like I was actually about to put myself through that. Instead, I used the assignment as an excuse to write my favorite author. Aside from gushing over his work, I put the question straight and to the point: how does one become a great writer?

His answer came on that fateful day when I was called to the principal’s office to receive his return letter. In it, he wished me the best, filled me in on his future projects, and he left me with the most unfailing writing advice I have ever received.

To be a great writer, you have to write.

It’s been over a decade since Zahn left me with those words, yet when it comes to constantly perfecting his own discipline, you can’t say the man doesn’t practice what he preaches. Scoundrels, his latest Star Wars novel, was released on the first of the month, but I haven’t been able to finish it before now. Let me start by saying I wasn’t so much expecting to like Scoundrels as I just wanted to read it for the sake of crossing another Expanded Universe title off my list. Sure, Zahn has been my favorite author since that faithful day twelve years ago when his kindness made me the coolest kid in school, but Scoundrels just didn’t sound like my kind of Star Wars book from all the promotional material I had read up on. For starters, there’s no Thrawn. There’s no Mara Jade kicking down doors, and there’s no smooth talking Talon Karrde smuggling Force-knows-what in and out of the Kathol Rift for those weirdo Aing-Tii monks. The Hand of Judgement — so prominent and just plan badass in Zahn’s last two novels, ain’t there either, and the always Imperial yet likable Gilad Pellaeon doesn’t even get a cameo. Alas, the book’s lack of turbolasers-blazing, high space opera action puts it in league with some of my least favorite Expanded Universe novels (I’m looking at you, Traitor.)

Yet for all the new characters and decidedly non Galaxy Far, Far Away imagery and references (seriously, did Han really eat an apple in the book?), Scoundrels stands right up their with New York Times Best Seller Heir to the Empire in creating a character driven story which leaves the reader coming back for more. And in the Ocean’s 11 style plot of heist and thievery, I’m reminded that my zest for reading great Star Wars novels isn’t just a zest for escaping into another galaxy, but a vitality of imagination driven from the words of a truly great writer. This is a book not only for the most illiterate of Star Wars Expanded Universe fans (who’ll appreciate the storytelling, deep character profiles, and descriptive scenes Zahn creates) but also those who’ve grown tired of the apocalyptic yet predictable nature that the post New Jedi Order has left us with. While set amidst the Original Trilogy, Zahn manages to create something fun and exciting but also invariably new. Opening up this new world of Star Wars that doesn’t preclude but doesn’t ground itself only in Jedi versus Sith, Rebel verses Empire, Zahn gives us what we all crave in our own politically charged, pointing-fingers world; an escape from the formulaic.

Obviously I’m endorsing this book, but one warning is in order. A few weeks ago I was listening to a Podcast which warned not to turn to the last page of the novel, and even though there were times during the scheming, plot twists, and character general mess that takes places with a cast pulled from every wretched hive of scum and villany across the stars, I took special caution not to reconnoiter into the book’s concluding pages. Boy am I’m glad I didn’t. If you’re a hardcore Star Wars fan – or even if you’re just familiar with the movies — the final ‘reveal’ will be something you will never see coming.

And if you’re anything like me, once you read that last line you might just stand up and give this book a long, decidedly worth-it, slow clap.

———————————————————————————————

*Like the idea of nuclear deterrence through proliferation, I used to think this essential, as the sight of my office space would dissuade even the most surely of bosses from unloading on me after I screwed up. However, after experiencing bosses who are far from surely, I mostly just keep all my junk in my office for show and tell purposes.

**Let’s just say I sucked at math. A lot.

***At the time, I did not think this to be the case. I, actually, was quite certain my work with the gifted and talented program made me intellectually superior to my classmates. For the record, I ended up taking Algebra a combined three times in my life and never got out of it with higher than a B-. Go figure.

The Case of the Cheese Sandwich

Let me have too deep a sense of humor ever to be proud. Let me know my absurdity before I act absurdly. Let me realize that when I am humble I am most human, most truthful, and most worthy of your serious consideration.

- Daniel Lord, Jesuit Priest

Through 23 years of existence, I may have been able to count on one hand the number of times I can remember my grandfather smiling. I don’t think he has spent most of his life angry or upset, but for the majority of the part I’ve been around for, anyways, he just hadn’t seemed, well, joyful. I’m not sure if he really laughed during all those years, and when he spoke, when he recalled the past, there just wasn’t that spark in his countenance that looked back and basked in a zest and enjoyment of life and all its gifts.

It’s as if he walked through days in grey, giving the same responses of “very good” to the same, bland meals my grandmother made for him, and shaking his head at each Buffalo Bills loss or news of how the Republicans were screwing up his country.

Then, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, given “six months” to live, and faced, with the first time in a long time, the prospect of not knowing what the next day would hold in store for him.

His response to it has been, in a word, dumbfounding. The guy hasn’t just smiled since that day, but he has laughed, he has recounted with joy, and he has suddenly begun to express a love and interest for the people around him. Long-reserved about the goings-on in my own life towards my extended family, I didn’t know how to respond to this change in his attitude at first, but as I found him letting his usual, seemingly archaic ”old man” demeanor down, so too did I open up to him. I may have even laughed at one of his old guy attempts at humor that went completely over my head.

I bring all this up because a few years ago at Christmas he gave me a copy of Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, which, while beautiful in its devotion, is an incredibly depressing and boring text to read. My grandfather received it prior to going into the Army back in the 1940s. I guess it’s fitting because the Imitation of Christ strikes me as the kind of book you give someone who might be about to die (although, in the interest of full disclosure, my grandfather completely missed the war part of the War, and was only involved in occupation duty.) You would think that after giving me a depressing text when he wasn’t actually dying, my grandfather might just give me a book about last rite’s or something when he was, in fact, dying. To my surprise, however, he presented me with a copy of Between Heaven and Mirth* for Christmas.

There’s a lot of good stuff in this book, which, at only 240ish pages and full of humorous asides from the author (a Jesuit priest), also manges to engage my interest in history, literature, and the kind of random stuff I often associate with good Sunday morning on-the-toilet reading. There’s also a pretty good story about a cheese sandwich in it, which, with complete disregard for copyright infringement laws that I’m forced to painstakingly pay attention to in my actual job, I’m going to break right now.

A man comes into his company’s lunchroom one day and sits down next to his friend. He opens his lunch bag, pulls out a sandwich, opens the wrapping, and peers down. “Oh ugh,” he says to his friend.

“What’s the matter?” asks his friend.

“A cheese sandwich! I hate cheese sandwiches,” he says and glumly starts choking it down. “They’re awful. So dry.”

The next day he sits down next to the same friend and opens his lunch bag. “Oh, I can’t believe it.” he says, “Another cheese sandwich!” His friend shakes his head sympathetically and watches his friend grimace as he eats the sandwich.

On the third day, the man once again sits down next to his friend and opens his lunch bag. “Oh, brother,” he says. “Another cheese sandwich!”

His friend says, “Boy, you really hate cheese sandwiches, don’t you?”

“Yes! I can’t stand them.”

Finally, his friend says, “If you don’t mind me asking something, why don’t you just tell your wife to stop making you cheese sandwiches?”

“Oh,” says the man, “I’m not married.”

“Well then,” said his friend, “who makes your cheese sandwiches everyday?”

“I do,” he said.

Laugh out loud I realize it’s not, but it did get a grin out of me. Told amidst a chapter in which Fr. Martin outlines his case for humor in not only our secular, but spiritual lives, the point of the story demonstrates how humor can help us recognize reality and ease stress. If you’re anything like me — and last I checked, the vast majority of the entities reading this blog are, in fact, human beings — than you probably have a bad habit of biting off more than you can chew. I do this pretty much every single day of my life. How? I get up at an ungoldly hour in the morning, insist on running a 10k on the treadmill at the gym, and then commute an hour to put in a day’s worth of work. I rush out to beat traffic, do errands I probably could be doing on the weekends, and then insist on making dinner from scratch every night.

The next day I attempt to do these things again, and then I bitch and moan ad nausea about how much life sucks and how I never have time to read the latest Star Wars comic book..

You might say I’ve been making one to many cheese sandwiches for myself, and haven’t learned to embrace a BLT or something like that.

The story stopped me in my tracks and made me reassess the way I operate, and not just because I felt like bacon. It was an ironic moment to find myself in considering I really never intended to read the book in the first place. Further adding to the irony (hilarity?) was the undeniable truth that I only started reading the book because, well, I was bored out of my mind during a six-hour car ride (hence, why I wanted bacon.) All because my grandfather is dying of cancer, and we had to make an inconvenient trip up to Buffalo for Christmas because of it.

Now that’s something I can’t help but chuckle at. Funny, you have to admit, that it takes a dying man and a pain-in-the-butt experience to finally put you in position to recognize that God doesn’t want people to walk around with a foot up their ass every day, and that living life might just involve a God who not only loves creation as a Father, but likes it as an Old Friend. So I guess the question is, have you leaughed today?

And for the record, I hate cold cheese sandwiches too.

*I can’t say enough about this book, which is why I’ll probably continue this thievery of copyright infringement in subsequent days and weeks, posting little quotes and asides that not only make me think, but seriously make me smile. And it’s really freaking hard to make me smile.

How I Say, “Merry Christmas”

Christmas has come in anticlimactic fashion for me this December 25th. Even though it has just begun, the Holiday feels over and done with. A rushed weekend filled with travel and family gatherings which saw forced smiles and hollow embraces, it came and went like a passing evening snow. Mostly, I felt myself wishing I was somewhere else during the whole ordeal. Somewhere, or sometime else. Christmas is never the same when you get older. Even when you go through the same motions and see the same faces you’ve experienced for 24 years. Come to think of it, especially when you  go through the same motions and see the same faces you’ve experienced for 24 years.

Everyone seems different, and different for the better. Me? The same. Grudgingly, stubbornly the same. And in this yearly reminder, I don’t know what to feel this Christmas Eve. I don’t know what to think. There’s a sense of disquietude lingering over me and my spirit, whispering into my ear that no matter how many Christmas movies I try to watch or songs I play on the radio, I failed to prepare adequately. I am, instead, lost amidst the lost amidst the traffic and the movement the world shows to us each December. Not just the movement of dollar signs and gathering and festivities of the secular world, but even amidst the religious message of hope and blessings that I’ve heard throughout Advent.

Both Christmases — that of celebration in the unity of what we’ve been blessed with on Earth and why and how we came to be blessed with it — they wait. They wait, and await, change on my part, and a decision to leave one world behind and embrace another one. The way is deep. The weather, sharp. But like the poet contemplating on the true meaning of Christmas and the necessary – yet not necessarily easy – decision we all must make to embrace it, I find myself in a familiar place. This year, more than past years, I identify with the Magi, and hope that I, like them, can say’ Merry Christmas’ when leaving one way of living behind for a better, happier one.

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kiking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

A Birthday Dinner: Something Worth Celebrating

“How was your Birthday?”

It figured Taylor would be the first one at work on Monday to ask me the dreaded question after my birthday weekend. She’s probably the sweetest, nicest person in the office, with the kind of hopeful — if not meek — voice that makes answering in any other way besides a Tony the Tiger “GRRREEAT” feel like letting her down.

But I couldn’t lie. It had been bugging me too much. I had to tell her.

“It sucked,” I just let out, my voice a tempered mixture of relief at admitting the fact and shame in recalling the memories of another birthday spent feeling sorry for myself.

It didn’t have to suck. Unlike past years, I didn’t have to be at work or at school, and also unlike past birthdays, my parents seemed to be especially willing to invest a whole day into letting me know they were up to doing whatever I wanted to do.

The only problem was that I didn’t want to do anything. Or at least I didn’t want to do anything on a Sunday before another stressful week at work. Wait a second; was that the excuse I used, or was it not wanting to spend money out for a dinner I could make myself or not wanting to throw off my parents’ plans after their own busy weekend out-of-state? The whole thing played out just as it always does, and just like not celebrating my 21st birthday because I spent the majority of it stuck in the Salt Lake City airport, this year’s saw me doing everything in my power to try to downplay the event. Too many past birthday dinners that could never live up to expectations and too much money spent on stuff I neither thought I wanted nor needed had entrenched regret and guilt in my mind, and judging by the way I’ve allowed the stress of recent work and world events get to me, I wasn’t about to get my hopes up for something material and fleeting.

One thing led to another though, and after spending my actual birthday alone doing, well, nothing, I found myself at the proverbial birthday dinner with my parents, knowing gifts — perhaps of necessity, perhaps for enjoyment — awaited me when we got home. It was a Sunday night, and even though it’s where I said I wanted to be, it was the last place I wanted to be.

We make our own luck, I suppose, because as luck would have it, the whole thing turned into something of a disaster. From the exceptionally small plates that left me feeling robbed without feeling satiated, to the usual banter between my parents and even the waitress’ losing our credit card, the entire dinner reached into the depths of all my anxiety issues and left them on the table like an uneaten breadbasket. The night, like many before it, ended with harsh words being exchanged between my mother, father, and I, and a feeling of guilt and shame that comes with the recognition that we should never have even tried to make the night ‘special.’ It just served to remind me how alone I feel in life, and didn’t do anything to make me remember the past year as one worth celebrating.

I hardly spoke to my parents the rest of the night, and the gifts they left out are still sitting in our basement, unopened. The gifts — wrapped tightly in glittering paper and red bows, like candy canes — are there for when “I feel like celebrating.”

But after the way I treated the two people who love me more than anything in this world, and after feeling the guilt and shame of being unable to smile and feel gratitude for all the gifts they have given me in life, I couldn’t imagine when that time for celebrating would be.

It might not be far off. Later on that night, before I went to bed, I was glancing at passages in this Advent reflections book I had grabbed at church but had then abruptly tossed into a corner of my room. I was reading back through the entries listed for the days I had missed, and, turning to the day of my birthday, I read the following words:

God loves you. He really does…Where you may see only your sins and failings, your Father sees your heart. He knows you’re not immaculate, but he also knows how much you want to do what is right. He knows all of your dreams, your needs, and your hopes. Nothing is impossible for him…

It’s telling, isn’t it? That same kind of unconventional  Divine love and recognition of an imperfect love returned is so akin to the relationship many of us have with those closest in our lives. My parents would and have done everything for me in my life — from giving me life to providing me with a place to live to believing in me even when I have given up on myself. Yet that love, like God’s love, is something that recognizes intent, and recognizes a yearning and desire to return the favor, even though our actions so often fail to live up to what we really desire. For me — the son who constantly struggles with showing gratitude and living the life of happiness they want for me — just that knowledge that they know I want to, well, that makse all the difference.

The morning after my birthday celebration gone wrong, my father hugged me.  It was one of those weird, you’d-never-expect it hugs that a father gives his grown son, but in his embrace I felt like he understood the realization I had come to from reading that reflections book. Suddenly all my guilt, all my shame, it just flew away. Even though we never seem to be on the same page in getting along and doing the things that convey our love for each other, we both would do anything, and I mean anything, for each other. They say it’s the thought that counts a lot this time of year. The more I experience life, the more I realize that’s not just a trite saying for Christmas presents, but something we experience everyday in our lives. My issues, my anxieties, like a lot of peoples’, they aren’t going to go away with a one good day or one attempt to change or push my boundaries. But even though we might not show those close to us we’ve ‘made it,’ we can still show them our intent. And, just as God loves and forgives each one of, so our loved one’s will recognize the intent behind our actions, and continue to love us even when we seem ungrateful.

That’s something worth celebrating, and not just for birthdays, Holidays, or special occasion, but for every day we share together.

On Saving and Cyber Monday

The thought occurred to me sometime between boiling rice for dinner last Sunday night and shopping for digital cameras on Cyber Monday. With Thanksgiving and its stuffing moving into the rear view*, the Christmas shopping season is now hitting our windshields, and had even managed to capture my attention before the calendar passed into December. What can I say? I’m a horribly domestic male, and if I do have a guilty pleasure aside from fine cheese and Taylor Swift songs cranked up in the privacy of my own truck, it’s shopping for a bargain.

It hasn’t always been this way. Back in college I was a complete minimalist. I rarely ate out, didn’t blow money on anything that wouldn’t keep me alive, and bought into the idea that a penny saved is a penny that will one day come in handy for something I might actually want for something I’d actually need.

Sometime during the last year, I must have arbitrarily decided that day had come. Having lived a life where excessive, Scrooge-like saving and austerity didn’t lead to happiness, I felt it necessary to swing my personal pendulum in the other direction. Slowly but surely, I’ve built up a comfort level with buying, well, stuff. No, that’s not being honest with myself. To be perfectly forthcoming, I’ve become a loose cannon when it comes to buying food and drink, and of having to have everything. Of needing to try everything. No sooner do I guzzle a 2 liter of coke zero in the time in takes to watch a commercial, or plow my way through an ice cream cone in a post-workout high, then I’m already opening up my wallet and checking Walmart shelves for what I want next.

It’s as if I’ve reset my comfort level of what is normal in life, and have, somehow, declared that my only way to interact with the world, to experience the vibrancy of life, is through the sensation of buy, eat, and repeat. After finally settling into a full-time job, there’s a sense that my days of saving for something that may never come — a house, a family, a life? — were futile, and the mere presence of having money and of already having saved money means I might as well spend it. Adding to it all are the stresses of life. Those moments of anxiety and frustration which seem to come in waves each and every day, and the feeling that my only way of escaping them is to feed this cycle of often pointless purchases and consumption.

Sometime in the days after Thanksgiving I was immersed in these impulses, wondering how to reconcile them with the seasonal questions of what I should get my parents for Christmas. I also was thinking of how to respond to their questions of what I might actually want.

Want. It’s an interesting word, and something which I’m still learning to define, especially when there’s a world out there that doesn’t even know what want means. They don’t know it because all they know is to need, and all they’re trying to do is to survive. I may talk about trying to ‘survive’ my of work related stress and personal insecurities, but outside my narrow focus are billions of people who are really struggling to just survive.

It is better to give than receive. We hear it all the time during the Holiday season, and in a lot of ways, I think most people embrace it. I mean, who hasn’t gotten a warm feeling inside when they see a loved one’s face? I sure have, but eventually, those smiles pass back into regular life. The gifts we give, the money we spend, even when they bring someone we love happiness, they’ll eventually fade away.

Which brings me back to the rice. Boiling it for dinner, I was in no way turned on in wanting its taste,  its nutrition, or even the act of making it — a culinary practice involving the creative construct of, say, a Soviet architect. Yet in making it, I was reminded that food, and that all material things, really, are not always meant to be about want or temporary feelings of euphoria. For some people, for most people,  food, drink, and all things are about need. The kind of need that really saves.

Last Christmas, my mother gave me the gift of a donation of a donkey in my name. I won’t lie — I wasn’t a kid jumping up into her arms thanking her for a Turboman. But looking back on the experience a year later, I realize that anything she could have given me in its place — a gift card, a useless kitchen gadget, a dumb shirt — would probably have passed away from my memory before we even got out of the cold months. What she actually got — a donkey given to a poor third world family — however, well that’s something which likely made a real difference (and perhaps still does) in a family’s life. Looking back on it, I can smile and know something good and helpful came from the simple act of honoring a tradition of giving.

I flash back to my boiling rice, and I know what I want this Christmas, and I know what I want to give. What I don’t know is if I’ll ever be a truly happy or content person. I struggle with anxiety, have a temper that often gets the best of me, and wear my flaws on my sleeves. But while I don’t know if I will ever find something — find, you might say, what I really want — in this life, I know I have the power to take each and everyday and help some one, somewhere, have access to something they truly need.

Somehow, all those years of saving suddenly make sense. You might say I knew I was saving for something. I just didn’t know it would be less about me, and more about something far more worth it.

Considering giving a gift that matters this year? Consider that for under 15 bucks, you can buy a enough food for a family in Haiti for an entire month. How can you object to that? I mean, if even I can give up 2 weeks of Coke Zero 2-liters, I don’t think finding an extra 15 bucks in your life is too much trouble. If you’re interested in giving a gift of giving this Holiday season (and really, there’s nothing wrong with Holiday, ok?) check out websites like Food for the Poor.  

*Although, I should opine, it doesn’t have to. Move into the rear view mirror, that is. After eating my mother’s rendition of Cooking Light’s Fennel, Sausage, and Caramelized Onion stuffing I’ve concluded, without question, that stuffing (or dressing, as my coworker from Georgia corrects me) need not be relegated to a once-a-year occurance. Frankly, I don’t know if once-a-week will even suffice given how addictivly tasty this stuff is.

Healing and Basketball

I never understood why so many movies were made about basketball before today. Dribbling drum-beats in a pre-dawn gymnasium, the quiet calm that comes over me transcends anything “just a game” could provide. Each meeting of ball and floor is rhythmic but varied, echoing in my mind even before the next repetition. A ball between the legs and then around the back in a dance of  instinctual choreography comes naturally. Creative. Expressive. On a cold day before I sell my body and my mind to anything but.

There is healing in that dribbling sensation, and recovery and respite in methodical shots. They come here — beyond the arc — or there — a layup — or elsewhere from the floor. The point where the ball leaves my hand does not matter, nor does whether the ball actually goes into the hoop. Call the bank, air-ball it, or drain in. As soon as the ball leaves my hands, no matter the outcome, the feeling of exhilaration comes full force, like a Gus Johnson exclamation in the final seconds of regulation during March Madness.

There’s something cathartic in the experience. It’s timeless – effortless – taking me back to days when I was in middle school, pretending to mix-it up in And-One streetball fashion with my I3 shoes and a bunch of awkward rich white kids (and one Arab) at recess. With no before, no  after. My sore body forgets the rushing heart rate of minutes before on the elliptical machine, trading in calories burned and gripped stares at a screen for imagination fulfilled and fading glances at a rim. All the while blessedly ignorant of the stresses in the day to come.

Shot after shot. Lay-up after lay-up. The morning, looming in a sunrise somewhere outside these echoes, this court, it no longer seems so daunting. Nothing seems so daunting.

They say there’s love in basketball. I say, there’s healing.

Roasted Kabocha Squash and Beet Salad with Curried Chicken

Anger. Stress. Disappointment.

Life finds us, finds me, in dispositions we’d rather leave behind.

So this week, perhaps more than any other

we remember what it is

we are thankful for.

For the curiosity to embrace the vibrancy of another culture’s markets

The creativity to build upon flavors and textures and aromas

The intuition to trust your own skills, your own hands

The love, the want, to provide for those we hold close.

The wealth bequeathed, to bequeath again

autumn’s gifts

life’s blessings

from a loving God.

An Election Day Appeal

I am not proud of the anger I put into my heart when I set out on my morning run on October 27th. The first day of early voting saw me determined to make a statement to myself and the world – in whatever symbolic, poorly thought-out way I could – that I didn’t just want change, I demanded it. After four years of brooding, four years of watching what I cared for dragged through the mud and people like me made to suffer the slings and arrows of those who claim they are free from hate or blemish, I was ready to vote.

To do so, I demanded a sacrifice from my body. I demanded my joints and my tendons to feel each hard footfall on the asphalt and each struggling shortness of oxygen in my muscles as I traveled the 6.5 miles to and the 6.5 miles back from the polling place. I wanted to show the world this is what it means to stand for something, and this is what it means to never take something for granted. I thought, and maybe some would agree, that it was the kind of act of romanticism and protest that would have made those who had once actually fought for voting rights proud.

I expected the pain of the run to reverberate as my body cooled down while waiting in line. I expect the cautious looks of last-minute campaigners holding signs and old folks waiting in line alike. I even expected the angry rebuttals by those who disagreed with me to come full force once I explained my position.

I received none of what I expected and all of what I never expected; a feeling of patriotism and good will towards my fellow men and women that found itself not only refreshingly nonpartisan, but altogether uplifting.

I do not consider myself a political person. I feel strongly in support of one party and disapprove the direction another has taken, but I do not like to interact with people on a political level. Standing at the polling place, flanked by individuals of different races, ages, and genders, I was reminder of why I don’t like interacting with people on a political level.

It’s because of the Orioles. Because of the Kindle Fire HD and the IPhone. It’s because of the guy who spent time as a defense contractor and the Virginia Tech students mulling what they had at Burger King the night before. It’s because of the old guy who visits the new county library each day, marveling at the use of his tax dollars even as protesters hold signs telling us what we don’t want our dollars going towards. It’s because of old friends spotted in line, and a chance encounter that turns into a half-hour run and a new friend on the way back. It is, it always has been, about people and their interests, lives, passions, and yes, just stuff about nothing. The smiles we neighbors wear when we take a second to admire a crisp, cool fall day before a coming storm — a literal storm — and taking the chance to talk to a stranger about what some might say is nothing at all.

I put hate into my heart when I started my run because of the spectrum of anthems of ads and talking heads, headlines and soundbites, which I have heard and reheard for what seems like forever. But when I went out to exercise that hate, to make a statement of my discontent to the world, I found myself completely and ironically content with it and it’s people. Standing in line and chatting with folks — good, honest, I have no-idea what their party affiliation was folks — I couldn’t be angry or upset no matter how hard I tried.

The experience did not cause me to change who and what I voted for. It will not stop me from feeling strongly in support of what I hope is a new administration in Washington. But that day does change the way I view the house across the street. The one with signs for the incumbent I have long expressed anger and even hatred for. It reminded me, as experiences with real, in-the-flesh people often do, that we as human beings are more than just the sum of our political beliefs. That those in and outside are community can interact or break bread or just hang out without ever having to discuss the things which divide us.

After I voted a funny thing happened. Starting back proud but slowly on tired legs, I was passed by a man with greying hair and a stride that would have made my 18-year old self feel jealous. He looked back and me and made some kind of joke about my speed, then slowed down as I sped up to catch him. One thing led to another, and we were suddenly running together, talking like old friends. He told me about his family, I told him about my job and how great it felt to get a day outside after spending all week cooped up in the office. We didn’t speak of politics or voting at all — another reminder, however subtle, that the world turns on and will continue to turn on despite whatever differences we may or may not have.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my day at the polls, and thinking about how it relates to this Tuesday. For many of us — for half the country, in fact — it will likely be a day that depresses and angers us. But it won’t be our last day, and for that, we’re blessed. My appeal, my prayer for all of us, is that on this election day we take some time to distance ourselves from the noise, to frame ourselves and our neighbors outside of the their votes and their campaign signs.

And my hope is that we don’t just do those things this Tuesday, but on each and every day of the four years down the road.

In-N-Out: My Favorite Cheeseburger

“Yes”

“No”

“Maybe”

“Yes”

“No”

“No”

“Yes”

These are the answers I gave my friend Jon when he asked me if I wanted to stop at In-N-Out Burger on my short vacation to Salk Lake City last weekend. You’d think I would have been a little less uncertain about wrapping up the three day trip with dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in the world*, but I had conflicted feelings about what would be my third visit to the iconic California hamburger institution.

Like a lot of thoughtful people, I have expectation issues. I used to call these food issues, but the more I’ve examined and admitted my faults in life, the more I’ve realized the anxious feelings which shadow my every move are more related to getting my hopes up and then let down than anything else. Like Pavlov’s dog I build these situations into my life where I look forward to material things only to find they aren’t sustaining or fulfilling, and like a Sunday morning after a Saturday of watching football alone, I often come to find that eating out someplace I’ve looked forward to eating out at too often leads to a feeling of “that’s it?” after all is said and done. For you economics people, think about it as an example of the law of diminishing returns.

The first time you do something – anything, really – it’s great. The second time, it’s good, but it’s not great. And after that? Never as good as that first time, with the memory of that first time always hanging back there in your mind to remind you your current experience doesn’t add up. And my first time at In-N-Out, complete with Animal style Double Double and fry amidst a packed house past midnight in 2009? Well, that was pretty damn special.

But I settled on a “yes” to Jon’s question, even though the cold Utah evening and splurge of a burger and fries on the first night of the trip really just left me wanting soup. I mean, the guy’s wife is a vegetarian, and given that the last time we had seen each other ended in a productive and memorable Double-Double experience, it just seemed logical. Besides, I had no idea when I’d get back out to Utah, and despite recently realizing that I’m quite smitten with a McDouble, I felt like I needed to remind myself what a really damn good cheeseburger tastes like. More than anything, I felt like a needed to recreate an experience before heading back to the life I slug through.

I like a lot of things about In-N-Out, from the prices to the ambiance and right on down to the Bible verses on the fry wrappers. I love the way the people who work their act and embrace the restaurant experience. The whole production is friendly and enthusiastic, with the employees showing a zest and exuberance for not only making hamburgers, but also making people happy. A lot like Chick-fil-A, yet in a some ways a lot more honest. There are no awkward “my pleasures” from the employee who really isn’t feeling it, and unlike other restaurants, those at In-N-Out will basically smile and get all your additions and tweaks correct, and they’ll do it without charging you a dime extra. This is important, because, after two previous trips of getting a carefully ordered Double Double Animal Style, I went with a more modest cheeseburger, with some modifications. Medium mustard-grilled with a grilled whole onion, as well as extra tomatoes and extra toasted bunage. The guy behind the counter even said they could even brew up a decaf coffee just for me, because a soda would have only frozen the life out of me after the previous night’s experience of Utah State’s debacle in Provo.

My burger wasn’t just good, it was great. Less beefy than the Double Double, it wasn’t the kind of thing to put me to sleep, and because of that, I think I enjoyed it more given the situation. This was the first time I really took some time to taste the bun. Its buttery – a taste I don’t experience much with a toast that keeps the whole construct together. The meat has a well seasoned, beefy-sweet flavor that’s only amplified by the fatty juices that remain after hitting the griddle. I wouldn’t say it’s a perfect medium, but the juicy patty still has enough give and release to stand above any fast burger its size.  There’s just something about that beefy flavor which pairs well with the milky, salty goo of the cheese, which I swear has a subtle lactic flavor most dismiss as “just American.” The ketchup and mustard make the whole thing sing, but it’s the fresh veggies that give the entire bite the complete textural contrast every burger lover craves. Oh yea, the whole grilled onion has an awesome, developed sweetness. Like browned bits scraped from a hot pan, there’s a certain echo of ingredients cooked together than binds the burger as one cohesive entity.

It’s my favorite cheeseburger from a taste standpoint, no doubt. Break it down to the X’s and O’s of flavor science, and you get something that works on every molecular level. But any flavor combination can be overcome through repetition. Even what “makes sense” can be supplanted by boredom and situation. Only the ambiance of In-N-Out, and what it represents for me, makes the chain’s Cheeseburger the best I’ve ever had.  

Turns out I was right to say “yes” to Jon.

I’ve eaten at In-N-Out three times, and each time has been a different, but wonderful, experience. From my first time eating in a packed house on a Saturday night after a Utah Jazz win, to a chance encounter with a mentor of mine while introducing my family to the chain on the day I moved away from Utah, the two previous experiences saw me enjoying that classic Double Double taste in the company of friends. Amidst a celebration, with something – everything – to be thankful for.

And this third time, even though coming with a more restrained order amidst a nearly empty restaurant, was still everything the previous times had been, if not more. I guess words can’t describe it. “You had to be there,” might not even do. To see my goofy self rattling through the order specifications – only to have the register dude recite them order perfectly – or to witness Jon and I huddling around his Smartphone watching college football on a 2-inch screen, you might have gotten a sense that we were just two old college buddies getting away from it all.

And you would have been right.

It struck me sitting there, slowly savoring my burger while staring at that phone and talking to Jon, that my “expectation” issues when it comes to food – when it comes to anything – are misplaced. They’re misplaced because I’m always trying to recreate something. I’ve come to realize this lingering but incomplete sense of nostalgia and sentimentalism – never, should I add, satiating – need not guide my every move in life. We, as humans, have the power to be optimists and to be opportunists. Yes, we often have “better days” behind us, but even though our current situation in life might not be exactly to our liking, it doesn’t mean we have to live trying to recreate past memories.

In-N-Out is special to me because each time I’ve been there I’ve created new memories, and I’ve created them with friends and people close to me in a different way. That’s a unique experience, and not one I’ve given myself the chance to take advantage of in many areas of my life – eating out included.

Before we left In-N-Out, I asked one of the young women working the counter if many people get burgers made to take back to the East coast. She told me they did, and they could get me a few if I’d like, provided I assembled the ingredients separately when I got back to Maryland. I thought about it, and nearly said yes. But then I thought to myself; is a great cheeseburger still a great cheeseburger if eaten alone in my office at work? Is it still a great cheeseburger if downed for the sole reason of making sure I ate enough calories at the end of a busy day?

Or is it a great cheeseburger only a great cheeseburger when the cheese and the burger matter less than the person and the place where you’re enjoying it?

I think I answered my own question when I told her, “I’ll just wait until I come back next time.”

*I mean this completely. Along with Jack’s Woodfired Pizza in Logan, Siena in Buffalo, and Ted’s hot dogs in Buffalo, New York, I’m not sure there’s anywhere else in the world I’d rather eat. Ok, Chick-fil-A, but that’s another story for another day. And I think I’ve already told it, several times.

In Annapolis

I remember a night, several years ago, when I thought I was alone. It was during a time in my life when I first started to lose myself. Running steps vigorously in the light of a full moon shining down on Washington D.C., the minutes after midnight at Catholic University weren’t spent in the silence of a spring evening.

Rather, they were spent in panic.

The panic of the throbbing, steady drum of a beating heart during vigorous exercise. The loud anguish of Fort Minor’s Bleed it Out flooding into my ears from my IPOD. The intermittent bellows of drunk students stumbling back into dorm room confrontations, only to pass out, as if lifeless, from the repeated fallacy of living for the moment.

I would run those stairs every night, pushing my body to exhaustion, forcing my mind into silence. Consumed by questions, perplexed by paths offered and potential yet to be realized, I put off the anxiety through the only way I knew how. A loud, angry, interior expression of the spirit reverberating through each mental exclamation point, until tired legs and oxygen debt found me incapable of remembering the pain of those thoughts. Again and again. Night after night.

Then one evening, a strange thing happened.

The moon was full, the sky bright. I thought I was alone, at least as alone as one can be at midnight in front of a Philosophy building. But in the exhausted silence after my breathing caught up to my beating heart, I heard a voice, and saw the outstretched arms of a skyward looking man.

After I overcame the initial shock and shook off a few, “what the fucks,” my first thought was to be embarrassed. Most kids aren’t abusing their body with that kind of exercise, much less doing so on a Friday night on a college campus more known for its drinking than anything else. But after I realized this wasn’t some drunk group of coeds intent to point and laugh at “the serious army kid,” I realized I was witnessing a man lost in the quiet peace of God’s gift of a spring night. That man, who I later realized was the President on the college, was praying. And he was praying in thanksgiving.

I was amazed. Not just at the man’s tranquil grace, but in the fault of my own daily ritual. The running, the isolation, the city itself was bringing me nothing but exhaustion, and even while I would momentarily silence my demons with each lonely limp back to bed, I was finding nothing lasting, nothing to be thankful for. I was finding, despite the silence, no quiet.

Since those days in college, I’ve yearned for quiet. Not silence, but quiet. There is a difference; silence, I believe, it the dull, absent state of existence we find ourselves in when were just too damn tired to think. Quiet, on the other hand, is a sort of serenity. A transcendental moment where there is a clarity in purpose.  That purpose being a genuine thankfulness to God, Nature, or maybe just the people and places in our lives. Not nearly as rare as we think, quiet is something we have to find, have to seek. God, and nature, can give us nudges, but only we can make that decision to look to the sky and embrace it amidst the empty promises of our daily routine. It was in breaking that daily routine early last week that quiet found me during an early morning sunrise in Annapolis.

I was tired that morning. Too tired to drag myself through the routine of working out at the gym before the sunrise, and too consumed by the stress at work to begin my day by taking that stress on in place of that routine. So I didn’t. I drove into the Academy early, walked down to the Chesapeake Bay, and took a deep breath. My gaze nudged up, I beheld one of life’s simple, quiet pleasures.

There’s something about the way the sun steadily progresses over the clouds that doesn’t just warm the air, but strengthens the spirit. The world, sleeping in the night like the wonder inside of us hides in the way we spend our days, suddenly comes to life in a dynamic move upward. It’s in that moment when the creeping reflection of the sun on the gentle ripples of the bay becomes a rush of warm light that you realize you’ve had it all wrong. In that moment of grace, that feeling of warmth and beauty, calm and serenity, you understand you were neither entitled nor guaranteed this moment. You also realize you didn’t earn it. Not through sweat nor hard work, devotion to duty, God, nor country, and certainly not through daily ritual of patience.

You are given this moment as a gift, and there is nothing you can do to take it away or to earn it, repay it, or assure it. Be thankful for what it is. Marvel in its simplicity and its warmth. What it brings you — the peace, the calm, the meaning in existance itself. And please, do please take the time to breathe slowly, smile slightly, and thank God for all the gifts in our lives. Like a fall morning in Annapolis, when the quiet of nature’s gifts conquers the noises inside our heads.