Breaking Hard is Up to Do With a Vengeance

Dying broke in paradise…

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” –Arnold Bennett

So we did it.  The house sold.  We packed up a shipping container with all of the shit we could stomach…plus a bit more (come on, we’re ‘Mericans), and left the mainland for the Garden Island in the archipelago known as Hawai’i.  We are a week-ish in and I can say, with little hesitation (only the amount allowable by prudence, and my inability to commit to anything, including my own thoughts), it is foreign.  Everything is different…even more so than I expected.  And I love it.  That is, when I’m not consumed with hating it.

Moving to Kaua’i reminds me of my first try at surfing.

It was a cold Saturday morning.  The time was 6 in the morning…yes: 6.  I was standing knee-deep in a body of water that is, on average, about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4444444 Celsius), give or take a variance so miniscule it requires no more of your time, called the Pacific Ocean, off the beach in the town called Westport, Washington.  The jetty was to my right as I gazed toward Japan.  There was a low cloud bank and I could not see my friend Smitty that well…I could only hear his derisive chiding (a form of surfer encouragement meant to draw you deeper into the water).  I was anxious, but in no real danger.  The surf was mild (about 3-5 feet), I was rocking a full wet-suit (borrowed w/ no gloves, hood, or boots), and I had a long board (the length of which I can’t recall, but I was assured that one could “get up on it in a swimming pool” which is to say: it was stable).  The under-tow or rip-tide was unappreciable.  Still, I hesitated.  I think I mentioned this before, but it bears the weight of repetition: it was cold.

There is a world of separation, in terms of commitment, with regard to being knee-deep in cold water (any temperature south of 98.6, really) and balls-deep.  But if you want to surf, you gotta get your balls wet.  This, of course, doesn’t apply to you, ladies…nor does it relieve you of the hook.  Any lady who has surfed cold water can tell you that their lack of testicles makes surfing cold water no more comfortable.  The Northern Pacific Ocean is nothing if not an equalizer.  It posses the special ability to make everyone’s private parts, regardless of how affable and outgoing they are in everyday life: shy.  ERA?  YES!  That being said, there is no time, not in Chronos, nor Kairos, that can be aptly described as: “the right time” to get one’s privates wet with 40 degree water.  This is an epiphany that strikes one when building up the courage to go deeper at 6 in the morning standing knee-deep in the springtime waters off the coast of Washington state.  But you know the old adage: “If you want to surf, you gotta get…”, you get the idea.

Everything in Kaua’i is an exercise in the preceding concept.

There is no time that feels like: “the right time” to do any of the things I have to do.  Everything from looking for a car, looking for a house, looking for a job, whatever, requires me to push the boundaries of depth at which I am comfortable.  And I am faced with the struggle of resisting the temptation to shrivel into myself every single morning.  It is the kind of discomfort that I need.  There-in lies a noble impetus to get outside of my head and meet with people on an unlevel playing field where “white privilege” is not a thing…in as much as this privileged white person can tell.  I have been 20 years out of practice in procuring any of these things from a square even near the number 1.  And I am at square one…plus a little start-up cash.  But here cash means a lot less than an 808 prefix in your phone number.  I thought I had a willingness to change everything…to go with the flow…but my phone number that has followed me for a decade plus 2?  I don’t know…

It’s petty, I’m aware.

It would be impossible for you (my lovely half-dozen to one-full-dozen readers) to over-estimate how much I under-estimated this move…but what do you do?  My suit’s already wet in the worst possible way…

Slow Going: Some Weeks I Feel Like a Nut; Some Weeks I Feel Like Two

My two girls…

“Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.” –Charles Bukowski

It’s been a strange week…somewhere between.  This is where I find myself lately.  I’ve never had much of a history…I am an American so this is not surprising.  But beyond that, I’ve personally never felt connected to any history.  I am an observer and an enthusiast, but not a participant.  This never bothered me much.  It still doesn’t.  But I’ve come to respect the comfort that it brings.  It would be comforting to have some tangible anchor that is bigger than me…bigger than my story.  It is in the transition that we question our moorings…for good or ill.  As a dad I feel I owe my daughters some sense of context.  This is tricky because we are a cobbled together family.  Our contexts are shifty things shrouded in mystery and coerced by shame.  Together we work to share ourselves with one another…to embrace life’s mystery and rise above the shame.  We are the lucky wanderers who’ve somehow have eked-out an alliance.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  All that to say: I never got around to writing a proper post this week.  I’ve been busy with all of the lunacy life counter-offers “the well laid plans of mice and of men”…

Breaking Hard is Up to Do part 1: Breaking Hard

The Garden Island…like the New Jersey of the archipelago…

“I wouldn’t mind the rat race – if the rats would lose once in a while.” –Tom Wilson (creator of Ziggy)

My house is short for time.  We are two weeks from putting our house on the market (a month later than I anticipated).  This mark seemed like an eternity two months ago.  But it was no eternity…in the midst of erosion-paced days and lightning-quick years the two months passed in no time.  And now shit has gotten very very real around here.  It is quite likely that my family and I are about two months from moving to Kaua’i.  Two months?  That’s like an eternity from now. 

The house has been a whirlwind of activity lately.  I haven’t been writing a lot of new content; I’ve been dealing with the to-do list around the house.  I plan to journal here a bit about the days leading up to the big move.  I know I have only tread lightly on the topic of this move here, but what do you say concerning something you’re trying to avoid thinking about.  Not that I haven’t thought about it.  It’s more that I’m always thinking about it but never acknowledging it.  The whole thing is so over-whelming.  Change is something for which I–simultaneously–clamor and fear, a paradox that a young Alanis would call ironic…and maybe it is, in Canada. 

The nut of it is: my family and I are selling our house and a large chunk of our earthly possessions (hopefully a large chunk), and moving down to The Garden Island to help start a church community with our longtime friends Jeff and Kim Adams.  We are doing this with some of our other longtime friends (I think nine-ish families in all); several of whom have already relocated to the island.  While it is exciting to be a part of something to which I believe God has called us, it is also stressful and scary.  Maybe it sounds arrogant that I believe God is calling me to something.  I don’t mean to be arrogant.  I believe the call of God has more to do with His story than the qualities of those called.  My greatest qualification in this endeavor is mere willingness.  Were willingness a virtue, I’d be sainted.  You know…if I were into that sort of thing.  My willingness is not really very pure.  It is, in large part, born of my own lack of imagination, or an insatiable appetite there for. 

On top of the move, this week has its own excitement.  My wife and I are celebrating our 19th year of marriage today, June the 4th.  Saturday, up-coming, I’ll be celebrating 40 years of being alive.  My 4 year old daughter will be starting in her first pre-school class, set to last the duration of June.  And my 5 year old daughter will be participating in her first “Field Day” at school.  This Field Day thing has given me reason for anxiety.  I hated Field Day.  I have the physique and natural athletic ability of a person who hates Field Day.  Maychance my daughter will do better in these sorts of endeavors…it would be impossible to do worse.  I don’t know how they do the whole rewarding superior athleticism thing these days.  In my day, it seemed humiliating.  Just a lot of other kids with ribbons.  I hope that if this is the case for Lu she at least has a better perspective about it than I did as a kid. 

I’ve turned into one of those annoying parents that enjoys kids sports where-in no one pays much attention to the score.  Not because I think the presence of winners has the potential to hurt the feelings of the losers (of which I generally was one), but because it sends the message that Field Day or Little League or Jr. Soccer actually matters.  When I was a kid, I thought that a red or a(maychance to dream)blue ribbon was an identifiable achievement about which I could brag through the summer.  I found out that it was much ado about nothing.  But I digress…we are a society who places a high importance upon victory even when it is symbolic.  And who knows, maybe Field Day is one of those things that teaches us a skill-set uniquely tuned to the pitch of the rat-race.  I learned much about the rat-race from my Field Day experience.  Chiefly: Fuck the rat-race.  It would be a proud moment in my life should my daughter learn a similar lesson.  But I digress even further…

So here it is post number one in a series documenting my break-up with the most enduring love of my life…The Olympic Peninsula.  I never imagined I would actually leave this place.  Now I can’t imagine staying.  Not because I don’t like it here, but because I don’t think I’m supposed to stay.  Great stories thrive on tension…

That Hard Livin is Gonna Catch Up to You Boy )epilogue[

When first I laid eyes on my girl...Miss Ruby

May 21st, 2011 at around 11a pacific, my family and I stepped off an international flight into the Sea-Tac airport with our new daughter, a beautiful little girl, in tow; we were happy and exhausted.  I walked out of the airport to a helicopter in which I was taken to an aircraft carrier; I put on my flight suit and gave a press conference to brag about my latest conquest in front of a ridiculously large banner, “Mission Accomplished”  its gospel.  A great end to a moving story…draw a tear from a glass eye.  Problem: going to China to adopt a little girl wasn’t and isn’t my mission…it isn’t even a means to an end; it is a part of a dynamic story that I am charged with living out, this is what I have learned, this is what I continue to learn.

It is strange, the way I segment my life.  “If only I could accomplish this, then I would be happy”, the thought scrambles through my mind with the frenetic delirium of a death-row gerbil.  It’s not so much strange that I have the thoughts; more so, it is strange that while the evidence against this theory looms large, I still convince myself that it is true.  Somehow, through the haze of a mis-spent youth, and the lead-curtain density of my Irish hard-hat, I do learn somethings.  This is what I learned through the “Hard Livin” saga.

I am no island.  I have lived, and at times continue to live, as though my actions have no effect on anyone but myself.  This is not true now, nor was it true before I almost blew the adoption of Ruby, had to drop out of school, had to pay thousands of dollars in fees and penalties, and had to spend time away from my family in county, these consequences just made the truth obvious…obvious enough even for me.  My actions have always affected those who care about me.  I have a habit of looking at relationships through the filter of, “how does this affect me?”.  “How will this or that benefit me and my needs?”  I am a consumer, a consumer of love…more to the point, a consumer of the emotion I recognize as love–for better or worse (or is it worser?).  The mistake in this type of thinking is that it is too patso-centric.  If I begin to focus more on loving others, rather than how my needs are being met, I open myself up to learning more about love, both the giving and receiving. No longer am I the mirrored-lensed goon, standing in a watchtower, high powered rifle in hand, making sure only the love I recognize makes it on to my yard; I am available to learn about love through others.  Love is a bridge that can span any moat.

I don’t like myself all that much.  Don’t misunderstand me when I say this…it is not a cry for help from a bruised and beaten down man who has no hope of ever realizing how much he should esteem himself.  I love myself to death.  I just don’t like myself.  Note: The problem of not liking oneself only becomes a problem if one is caught up in self-worship.  If one is focused outward, one never really examines this question for an unhealthy amount of time.  Oh sure there are times of reflection and all that rot, but it never comes to a point of self-loathing or any of the other logical conclusions of a life spent in terminal self-reflection.  For me, I stopped liking myself when I realized the thing I worshiped was not living up to my expectations.  This is no new quandary, this is the inevitable consequence faced by anyone imprisoned by idol-worship.  Once the object of your worship falls short of your expectations, you become warm to the thought of doing away with said object, or yourself (as the shame of a life spent in false worship becomes to great to bear).  The problem with self-worship is the two solutions are really the same.  Thus comes the test of ultimate idol destruction, a test some people pass…unfortunately.  Another solution is to turn a way from idols and fall to your knees before the one true God.  I did this once, which made me a worshiper of God positionally, but on a practical level, in the day to day, there is something in me that always finds a way to worship myself.  For me turning away from idols is a daily routine.  Hopefully.

Finally, I learned that my hope is not completely wrapped up in the idea that one day I will slip the surly bonds of this body and worship God without fetter; it is also wrapped in the truth that God is changing me consistently; He is changing me daily.  Sometimes the change comes through wave after wave of shitty circumstance and sometimes it’s not that easy, but I am learning that I can trust God through it all.  In the airport coming home from China, it struck me that in ten days the one year anniversary of the night that I was arrested for DUI would be here.  The night that started this chain of events.  I remembered the way I thought of God almost a year prior.  I was a man who thought, if given the option between making me pay the consequences for my poor choices, or saving a little girl from being an orphan in China, my God would save the girl every time. As I stood there in the airport, and as I sit here writing this now, the power of the day to day change God initiates and completes in my mind is palpable.

 I know now, I serve a God who can do both.