Leave From a Tour of Duty

When I was in college, I read a book titled The 13^th Valley by John M. Del Vecchio about the Vietnam war.  I don’t remember the plot, aside from the war thing, which is the worst part of having a bachelor’s degree in literature.  My memory for narrative details is terrible, and I often worry that my alma mater may test me at some point and decide to revoke my degree for lack of retention skills.  I’ve read a lot of the great works of Western literature, but I only have impressions about each.  Lord of the Flies: weird.  As I Lay Dying: hard to follow.   Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: the part about writing about a single brick was cool.  I might remember a few phrases, or a few scenes, but the narrative thread unravels in my mind moments after I finish the last page of a novel.  It would be an occupational hazard if I pursued a career in literature, which I suppose means being a tenured college professor.  I love that idea, but it won’t happen for me, as the students would undoubtedly catch me thumbing through the Cliffs Notes edition of whatever book I was teaching.

The one thing I do remember from The 13^th Valley is a scene in which the main character, a soldier who has served a long tour “in country,” has returned to duty in Vietnam after having a few days of leave.  The character describes the feeling of being back in a war zone, with his anxiety increasing as he realizes he is, once again, in constant danger.  He had been in a high stress situation for so long, he didn’t feel comfortable being in a safe place.  He preferred the tension.  I can report that, during this time of quarantine, I have not reached that soldier’s state of mind.  I am feeling some stress and anxiety as a result of being on lock down at home, but it is, thankfully, not, yet, my new normal. 

I live in Washington, and we have been living under a stay at home order for about three weeks.  During that time, I have been working from home.  I spend my days sitting at my writing desk clickety-clacking away at my laptop and participating in seemingly endless video/teleconferences.  The time passes quickly, but it’s entirely unnatural for me.  My normal office work life is made up of human interactions.  I attend a lot of in-person meetings, in conference rooms, hallways, and workstations.  Sitting at my desk in front of my computer is almost a last resort.  Now, it’s my whole life.  My workplace is a laptop computer, and my colleagues are disembodied voices over Skype or Zoom, as we avoid video so as to minimize bandwidth usage.  Every day in this home office feels like a week, and when my work day is done, I commute down a single flight of stairs and join my fellow inmates, my wife and kids, for evening rituals, including dinner and TV.  

My daughter’s birthday was ten days ago, and she wanted ribs for dinner.  Birthday ribs have become a tradition, the official start of grilling season.  The only question this year was if the weather would cooperate.  Rain was in the forecast, so I developed a mitigation plan involving a large patio umbrella placed near the grill to fend off any unwanted precipitation.  

I woke early on birthday morning, opting to skip my morning workout to focus on preparing the slabs of pork.  Instead of swapping my PJs for workout clothes, I donned sweatpants and a hoody to brace myself against the slight chill of our house that had cooled down overnight according to the thermostat’s programming.  I retrieved the vacuum packed set of three St. Louis cut pork sparerib racks from the refrigerator and set them on the counter and gathered my tools, including a large cutting board, Santoku, nut pick, paper towels, and bowl of spice rub mixed by my son.  

As I rinsed each slab with water and patted them dry with paper towels, I found myself exhaling, seemingly for the first time in days.  My shoulders relaxed, and I became immersed in the culinary process.  I worked the nut pick along one of the bones to loosen the membrane and then pull it away, pinching with a paper towel to keep grip on the slick tissue.  I sprinkled generous portions of the spice mix over the racks and gently rubbed the meat to ensure an even coating.  Finally, I placed each seasoned slab on a half sheet baking pan to rest in the refrigerator for a few hours before I started the fire.  As I took each step in the barbecue preparation process, I felt the warmth of the familiar, like a comfortable blanket around my shoulders.  I was back in my element and the pace of time returned to it’s normal rate.  I breathed deeply, savoring the normality of preparing a meal for my family and looking forward to the time I would spend that afternoon pit-side, tending to the fire and smoke.  No computer, no disembodied voices, and no coronavirus.  Just for a moment.

I’m glad that anxiety has not become my default setting, at least not yet.  I still find peace in being with my family, and I am grateful we are together now.  Just like The 13^th Valley, I’m certain I won’t remember everything about this pandemic.  The story of COVID-19 will be an epic, with too many characters to remember and far too many tragic endings.  While most of the plot details will be lost to my sketchy memory, I will remember that moment in the kitchen when everything was as it should be, when I found peace in the act of cooking.  

Happy Easter, friends.  

Keep it Simple

On a recent trip to visit my son at college and participate in a half marathon in the same city, I confronted one of my fears.  It wasn’t the fact that my youngest child is old enough to be in college, which is a bit of an existential crisis, nor was it the fact I would be running 13.1 miles the next morning.  I’ve done that many times and it doesn’t scare me.  The thing that triggered my anxiety was the toilet in our hotel room.  We had stayed in this facility several times over the last year, and  I was aware they were undergoing remodeling.  During the previous trip, for example, they were upgrading their reservation system.  Between that visit and this one, they had made some changes in the rooms.  Specifically, they had affixed electronic bidets on the toilets.  My name is Todd, and I am afraid of bidets.  

For the unaware, a bidet is a plumbing fixture intended to wash your butt.  It’s my understanding that a jet of water squirts up while you’re seated, cleaning out your nooks and crannies.  I can’t say for sure how it works, because I’ve never used one.  After making a deposit, I’ve never had a desire to hose off.  Toilet paper has always served my needs adequately.  

We checked into our room after a long drive, and I took the opportunity to relieve the pressure on my bladder.  When I entered the lavatory, I saw the new addition perched atop the toilet bowl.  The lid was slightly larger than the average seat cover, providing some space for the washing mechanism, and featured a control panel on the right side of the seat.  I sighed at the sight.  My in-laws have had this type of bidet attachment affixed to their toilet for years, but I have never made use of it.   To me, a toilet is a one-way trip, and the idea of it expelling its contents is a bad thing.  I have, over twenty-five years of home ownership, cleaned up many overflow messes.  In my defense, I was not the cause of all of the mishaps, but I am typically appointed as janitor to swab the decks.  I prefer the water to stay below the rim.

It’s not just the idea of water squirting up that bothers me.  The electronic bidets I have encountered have complicated control mechanisms that I find intimidating.  It’s like the panel of buttons on the arm of Captain Kirk’s chair in Star Trek.  If a seat is going to have that many control options, I want them to be for important stuff, like raising shields or calling down to engineering to get a status report about the warp drive.  I don’t want to be equipped to fend off an attack by Klingon warbirds when I’m in such a vulnerable position, pants down.  This bidet even came with a laminated 8.5” by 11” instruction card that outlined all the features and options, featuring terms like: rear, soft rear, cleansing, drying, oscillating, temperature, and pressure.  This could be the instruction manual for a clothes washer/dryer unit.  It’s just too much to process.  The toilet is a place of evacuation and, occasionally, quiet contemplation.  I don’t want to have to read a user manual when I’m taking care of business.   

My basic fear is that if I did engage the washing mechanism, I would instinctively leap from the seat, either from my own nervous anxiety or because I accidentally hit the oscillating high pressure button, crash into the bathroom door, and fall to the floor while the stream of water cascades down onto my back.  I can’t stand the thought of calling for help because I was spooked by a bidet.  

Maybe some day I will give it a try, but it’s not a high priority.  Instead, I will make sure there is a roll of toilet paper available while I sit quietly and contemplate things like my advancing age or my next race (Rock’n’Roll 10K in Vegas!).  There’s no need to overcomplicate things.  

A New Recipe Deferred

My writing career may have been saved by a marinade.  Yesterday, I was planning to try out a new grilling recipe: New Mexican Chile Pork Stew.  I made sure all the ingredients had been acquired, and I cracked open the cookbook to determine when I needed to start the first batch of coals.  This recipe, like my other favorite grilling endeavors, was going to require about four hours over the fire.  Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed the fine print that required the pork shoulder to be marinated for 12-24 hours before cooking.  The horror.  I informed my wife that we would not be eating New Mexican Chile Pork Stew for dinner on Saturday; the porcine deliciousness would have to wait until Sunday.  

As a result of my lack of attention to details, I suddenly had several hours of time I had planned to spend pit-side tending the fire now available for other pursuits.  While it would have been easy enough to settle in to season four of Orange is the New Black on Netflix, I decided it was time to face my nemesis.  I carried my laptop upstairs and sat in the well-worn black faux leather chair behind my writing desk.  I had been avoiding my desk for weeks, as it was a visceral reminder I had work to do, work that I was not looking forward to.  I opened the lid of the computer, clicked on the Scrivener software icon, inhaled deeply, and opened up the file labeled “Europe – Revision Draft.” The screen filled with the opening paragraphs of my story of a three-week family trip to Europe five years ago.  

I completed this draft back in December, and I had printed copies of it for my family as a Christmas gift.  I asked each of them to read it and give me feedback.  I knew this would be my easiest audience, as they had been on the trip with me and were inclined to enjoy the story.  For them, it would be a narrative version of flipping through a photo album to be reminded of the trip we had taken together.  My wife, mom, brother, and sister-in-law each returned their marked-up copies over the past few months.  In addition to punctuation problems, they noted small errors in my recollections, offered additional anecdotes and details, and told me they enjoyed it.  I read their comments with great interest, but I didn’t read the text.  I couldn’t face it.  

Despite my family’s positive response, I was scared of my own words.  I feared I would hate it, and all the work to write it over the past five years would have been wasted effort, and a missed opportunity to have binged more Netflix.  I’ve been so focused on avoiding the manuscript, it’s been a chore even to write blog posts for the past few months.  I didn’t have writer’s block, I had stacked up blocks between my mind and keyboard.  Those blocks included lots of grilling sessions on the weekends — which would otherwise be prime writing time — including spending almost 24 hours smoking brisket, pork shoulder, and ribs for my son’s graduation party two weeks ago.  That was an epic work of avoidance.

After my new pork stew recipe betrayed me yesterday, I faced my creation and started reading aloud.  I find that reading out loud is a good test of the written word, as it makes the grammatical flaws obvious.  I listened to the sentences accumulate into paragraphs, and, overall, I liked what I was hearing.  I became aware that my shoulders had relaxed, and I was smiling.  Exhale.  I fixed sentences that needed help, deleted sentences that were beyond help, and enjoyed hearing the story unfold.  I read my way through Geneva, Lausanne, and Bern before it was time to take a break and get the pork marinating for dinner on Sunday.  

I will return to Europe this afternoon, hopefully getting through Lucerne and Paris before heading to London, and I will continue to make it the book I want it to be, the story I want to tell.  I will listen to the words and make changes that need to be made.  It won’t be long before I arrive at the penultimate draft and the next major hurdle: sharing it with my beta-readers.  My family was easy, but my beta-readers are friends who, while they care for me as a person, have no qualms with pointing out problems with my writing.  They are the Keepers of the Brutal Truth.  I’m not out of the editorial woods yet, but at least I’ve started walking again.    

Now, please excuse me while I go check that recipe one more time.  I don’t need any more emotionally draining culinary surprises right now.  I’ve got revisions to make.  

The Dog Ate My Homework

Wednesday night was going to be Writing Night, and I had it all planned.  My wife and daughter would be hosting bunco night downstairs, thereby allowing me to retreat to our “bonus room” – the large room above our garage that serves as a home office and arts and crafts studio – to, finally, get back to working on my European travel journal writing project.  I have been avoiding the work as it causes me some anxiety thinking about confronting the blank page that I must fill with clever and witty phrases.  I frequently doubt my ability to write well, so I don’t, and that only adds to my sense of panic and dread.  What good is a writer who doesn’t write?  I had gotten to a point on Wednesday that I was finally excited at the prospect of writing again, but my dog had other ideas.

I love my dog, Autumn Islay (pronounced “I-luh;” it’s Scottish. You can follow her on Instagram, of course, at autumnislay).  We celebrated her first birthday earlier this month, and this first year with her in our lives has been wonderful.  She is a source of pet-owning comfort and love for all of us, something we haven’t before experienced as a family.

Aside from a goldfish and two guinea pigs, she is our first family pet.  The goldfish wasn’t a pet as much as a chore.  It was my responsibility to clean the tank each week to keep the little critter from being overcome by its own filth.  While it was obviously appreciative of being fed, it wasn’t capable of expressing affection.  Its unblinking eyes did not convey warmth, and cuddling on the couch was out of the question.  The guinea pigs had a similar ocular limitation, but they could be petted and held.  They could not, however, be in the same cage together.  Cocoa Spots and Thistle Down may have been siblings, but those girls did not have a strong sororal bond.  Thistle would bristle and lash out whenever she shared a space with Cocoa, so, to prevent further violence, we put up a wall to divide their spacious living quarters into two small pigger apartments.  Thistle thrived once she stopped raging against her sister, but Cocoa had a tough life.  She loved her sister and wanted to be with her, but that couldn’t happen.  As a result, she would anxiously gnaw on the wire frame of her cage.  This caused her top teeth to break, which is a big problem for a guinea pig.  Rodent teeth grow continuously, and without those top teeth to rub against, Cocoa’s bottom teeth grew too large.  We had to take her to the vet occasionally to get her teeth ground down.  The stress of it all was the likely source of what we diagnosed as a stroke that she suffered.  She ended up blind in one eye, but her demeanor changed. While normal guinea pigs have the air of someone living in a state of constant fear, no doubt based on the genetic knowledge that they reside near the bottom of the food chain, our buck-toothed, half-blind, mentally impaired Cocoa seemed simply amazed most of the time, like a newborn.  Cocoa died prematurely as a result of the difficulty she had eating and, I imagine, her angst about her sister’s disdain.

I learned Wednesday evening that Cocoa was not our only pet with anxiety.  As the bunco guests began to arrive, I retreated with Autumn into the bonus room and closed the door.  I hoped she would lay at my feet while I clickety-clacked away at my keyboard, but she had other concerns.  She knew her girls – my wife and daughter – were downstairs, and they were with strangers.  This created an unbearable tension for our one-year -old labradoodle, and for the next two hours she scratched at the door, paced the room, and begged me to let her out.  I did what I could to reassure her, speaking in gentle tones, and trying to pet away her concerns, but she was inconsolable.  As I sat at my desk, she sat at my feet, looking into my eyes and pleading with me. She whimpered, yelped, and barked her frustrations to me.  I knew she would be o.k., but she did not share my belief, and it broke my heart a little.  I’d been here before.

More than ten years ago, I was putting my daughter to bed when she told me, in no uncertain terms, that she needed to see her grandmother.  Grandma lives on the other side of town, and it was bedtime.  This was not a rational request.  There was no reason my daughter needed to see her grandma, but as I persisted in denying her request, it became clear that this was not about reason.  This was a desperate need based on my daughter’s feeling that she might die if she did not see her grandmother at that moment.  I didn’t know what to do, and I told her no and reassured her it would be o.k.  She begged, pleaded, and demanded, and, still, I said no.  I didn’t know it then, but this was anxiety, and it scared me.

I’ve learned a lot about anxiety since then.  My daughter continues to struggle with it, but she has gotten help, and it’s much more manageable these days.  It is a part of who she is, but it doesn’t define her.  She is among the most creative, generous, and loving – not to mention funny – people I know, but that pot of anxiety is always simmering on the back burner.  Anxiety sucks.

The bunco party came to an end, and Autumn Islay was happily reunited with her girl, my daughter.  Autumn is going to become a therapy dog, helping others manage their sometimes crazy feelings.  My daughter will work with her on the training and certification.  Together, they will make a difference in other people’s lives, based in part on their shared understanding of the pain that our brains can put us through.

My anxiety about delving back into my pile of notes about traveling through Europe is nowhere near as debilitating as what my girls have experienced, but I gain strength from their courage.

P.S., I may have caused Autumn to have another panic attack Thursday night.  I was cheering, that is shouting, so vociferously as I watched my Oakland Raiders win a last second victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, she ran from the room and hid under my wife’s desk.  When I’m watching the Raiders, I’m not my rational, mild-mannered self.  Sorry about that, Autumn.   Since the Raiders aren’t playing on this football Sunday, I should be able to spend some time writing about Switzerland.  I promise not to yell, so feel free to sit at my feet while I clickety-clack away.

Go Up Front

I was wrapping up a meeting on a recent Thursday afternoon when my phone buzzed, letting me know my wife had sent me a text.  She is not a frequent texter, so it caught my attention and, since the meeting was at an end, I tapped the screen to look at the message.  I hoped it might be an emoji-based expression of affection, but, figured it was more likely a request for me to pick up something from the grocery store on my way home.  I was not expecting a photo of my garage filled with a mountain of trash with the caption: “Look what I came home to.”  Upon closer inspection, which required taking off my glasses so my late middle-age eyes could focus on the details, I realized the trash was not trash, but was, in fact, a pile of everything in my garage that is normally found on the shelves therein.

The shelving system I had built three years ago had collapsed.  Specifically, the standards that held the shelf brackets had ripped away from the wall on the left side of the garage, causing everything that had been neatly stored to be ejected onto the concrete floor.  I did a mental inventory of the shelf contents and realized the heap included boxes of old toys that we are keeping until our children have kids of their own and an extensive collection of paint supplies, including drop cloths, paint brushes, paint thinner, and dozens of quarts and gallons of every shade of house paint we have ever applied to the walls of our abodes over the years.  We are minor league hoarders when it comes to retaining cans of paint.  More troubling was the knowledge that there was a Mason jar filled with acetone somewhere in that pile.  I had put the volatile solvent in a glass jar because a) the plastic jug the acetone was originally contained within had cracked and b) I had an empty glass mason jar handy.  I should have known better, since we live in an earthquake zone and glass jars filled with toxic chemicals are in a constant state of tectonic jeopardy.  I also recalled that I owned two gallons of Thompson’s Water Seal waterproofer. I bought them on separate occasions for two different projects, neither of which required a whole gallon, but that’s how they sell the stuff and, when starting the second project, I had forgotten I already owned an almost full gallon can.  When the opportunity to go to a hardware store presents itself, my default is to go shopping rather than check to see if I actually need anything.  I scrutinized the photo and saw the concrete driveway in front of the garage was discolored due to some moisture.  It was not a rainy day, so I assumed that a nasty swill of turpentine, acetone, and waterproofer were coating the driveway.  While waterproofing my driveway could have merit, I figured the paint thinner and acetone would counteract any good qualities.  I thanked everyone for their participation in the meeting and headed out the door to get home to help my bride.

I rushed to my truck in the office parking lot, started it up, and pulled out quickly.  Too quickly, as I almost T-boned a co-worker’s car passing in front of me.  I slammed on the brakes and felt my heart racing from the shock of the near miss and my fears about what waited for me at home.  The ten-minute drive was blur of anxious thoughts.  I knew no one got hurt, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what almost happened: my wife could have been seriously hurt, the minivan could have been badly damaged, and undoubtedly I would have a difficult clean-up process to minimize the environmental disaster that my failed storage system had inflicted on the driveway.

When I got home, I found the reality didn’t match my fears.  The shelf standards came away from the wall because the screws holding them had pulled straight out of the wood they were screwed into.  The standards, brackets, and wood shelves were all in good condition, and I could rebuild it.  The toys were unbroken for the most part, no paint spilled, the two gallons of waterproofer were still contained, and, inexplicably, the glass jar of acetone didn’t break.  The fluid that had watered down my driveway was a gallon of windshield washer fluid.  My driveway was not a superfund cleanup site. In fact, it was more hygienic now, having been doused with a gallon of soap.  More importantly, no one got hurt.  My wife had backed the minivan out of the driveway twenty minutes earlier to pick up our son at school.  It could have been so much worse.  With one trip to the hardware store, I had new, and bigger, screws and an extra standard with brackets to distribute the load.  I remounted the shelves and loaded them up before the night was over.

Even though it had all worked out, I was in a foreboding mood the following Saturday as I drove north to see a metal show in Tacoma.  I had almost talked myself out of going, but I was meeting my metal brother Sean, so I decided to press on so I could spend time with my friend even if I wasn’t feeling like a metal warrior that night.  The venue didn’t have much to offer in terms of parking, so I drove a couple blocks, ending up parked behind two other cars on a street in front of a house in a residential neighborhood.  While I should have been happy that parking was free, I feared my car would be ticketed or towed away.  To ratchet my anxiety up a notch, I walked to the venue wondering whether I had remembered to lock the car.  I knew I was fretting unnecessarily, but I couldn’t help but think my car would probably be broken into shortly before the cop wrote a ticket and called the tow truck driver.  It’s not unusual for me to consider everything that could go wrong while I’m trying to enjoy myself at a metal show.

The venue was a large bar, so Sean and I found seats at a table near the back where we could watch the opening acts perform.  When the headliners – Metal Church – took the stage, my mood had only slightly improved.  I was still wallowing in my fear and loathing of my decision to attend the show and put my vehicle at risk.  The band played well, and halfway through their set, I got over myself and decided to get out of my chair and go up front to stand near the stage.  It was time to bang my head with the “Gods of Wrath.”  It was a good decision.

The music poured over me like a warm shower, washing away my anxiety.  Live metal music is a tonic that quiets my worried mind and allows me to live only in the moment.  There are no risks, dangers, or what-might-have-happened.  There is only the music.  The guitar riffs shredded my tension, the drums became my heartbeat, and the only voice in my head was the voice of vocalist Mike Howe standing in front of me shouting, “I know these are the badlands, somehow I’ll find my way!” I reached up and shook his hand, making a momentary connection with another old school brother in metal.  As the band generated a joyous crescendo of heavy metal noise to bring the proceedings to an end, I raised my hands in a full metal salute.  Jubilation, triumph, and exultation had replaced fear, dread, and apprehension.

I was happy and calm as Sean and I walked out of the venue.  I’m grateful that we share a passion for metal music that can take us out of ourselves and wallow in exhilaration free of worry and woe. We said our goodbyes, and when I walked back to the neighborhood where I had parked, I found my car just as I left it: locked, unscathed, and unticketed.  I had wasted a lot of energy worrying about what could go wrong before I walked into the joyful waters of the front row at the Metal Church show.

On the drive home, I reflected on the previous few days and come to a few realizations:

1. Yes, bad things do happen, they can really suck, and sometimes you can’t fix it.

2. I’m grateful for the disasters that aren’t so disastrous, like the garage shelving collapse that didn’t really do any damage.

3. I should try not to be afraid of small screws, Mason jars of acetone, tow trucks, parking tickets and all the other things that could go wrong.

4. I should go up front and experience joy whenever I can.

I got home safely around 1 a.m. with a grin on my face and the music of Metal Church reverberating in my body and mind.  I have spent the days since reveling in how fortunate we were that the garage disaster was so uneventful.  I’m strangely happy that my shelves collapsed so harmlessly.  I have good friends that are facing real struggles that aren’t so easily escaped, and to them I send all the positive energy I have, so they can find their way through those badlands.

Don’t hesitate to “go up front” whenever you can.  \m/

Reflections on the Underworld

Taking a week off work with no particular plans is a mixed blessing. I enjoyed not having any particular responsibilities aside from taking over as head cook for the week.  I was like a visiting celebrity chef specializing in grilling, and the audience – my family – was appreciative.  The only interruption to Grill Fest 2016 was Tuesday, when I went to see Amon Amarth play a concert in Seattle, which brings me back to my point: while the lack of responsibilities was a delight, the lack of a packed vacation agenda meant I had a lot of uninterrupted time to think, and thinking can be problematic for me.  For the most part, my thoughts this week have been filled with Vikings, heroicism, and the descent into the underworld.  Like I said, thinking can be problematic.

I’ve been clear about my Viking obsession recently.  In a recent post, I mentioned drawing nordic runes on my arms before running a marathon last Sunday and listening to Amon Amarth’s Viking-themed metal music to provide an inspirational soundtrack to the later miles of the course.  The Viking motif culminated Tuesday night when I got to see the band perform live in Seattle.  I have been anticipating this show for months, and it all came together as I had hoped.  My fellow metal heads – including the geezer contingent of Sean, Cam, and Rob, along with the youngsters Sean “Jr.”, Stacy, and Rachel – were all in attendance to partake in the feast of Nordic metal.  Amon Amarth did not disappoint.  They played with a relentless ferocity for almost two hours, and we, their devoted followers, sang along and banged our heads with expressions of pure joy on our faces.  Amon Amarth were great Viking gods, bestowing thunderous lightning bolts of intense metal music upon us.  Sometimes I think bands must get tired of playing the same old songs, but I realize they are giving us a great gift; they are serving their audience.  It was a heroic performance.  That’s when I got obsessed with heroes, or the lack thereof.

I’m not feeling very heroic at work, though I feel I should.  While I am prone to bouts of arrogance, I don’t mean to declare myself a hero in any kind of Marvel way.  Rather than comic book heroes, I’ve been thinking about Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces.  Campbell is one of my favorite thinkers, and his words about mythology and, specifically, heroes has been on my mind when I think about work.  Specifically, my anxiety-level at the office – based on the, shall we say, “politically-charged atmosphere” – has been increasing week by week.  Just prior to logging off my computer before taking the week off, it occurred to me that – given the outrageous demands on our time and the challenges to our principles – it feels as though, mythologically speaking, my coworkers and I are on a descent into the underworld.  If you’re not up on you classical mythology, think about Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke, as part of his Jedi training with Yoda on Dagobah, goes into the Dark Side Cave and confronts the illusion of Darth Vader.  Entering that cave, Luke knew he would be faced with his greatest fear, but he survived it, became a Jedi knight, and went on to lead the rebellion in bringing down the Galactic Empire.  I gotta get me some of that.  But as I think about the impending Monday morning, I can only see a scary, dark cave in front of me.

I pulled my copy of Campbell’s The Power of Myth off the shelf to brush up on the basics of the hero’s journey into the underworld.  That’s right, sometimes I actually look at a real book rather than Wikipedia to find the answer to a question.  In reviewing the text, I was reminded that the hero often brings back a gift for others, knowledge or power that benefits the world.  The hero serves the community, something larger than himself.  Now that’s something to think about.

This week has given me a lot to reflect on.  Just like my metal brethren – and sistren – at Amon Amarth, spending time together in the pit, I’m trying to muster up my courage to leap into the underworld at work with my friends and colleagues, confront those things we fear and return to the world with knowledge and power that will help us overcome the challenges we face.  In that Amon Amarth pit, I got knocked down, falling hard, but before I had time to think about it, I was hoisted back to my feet by three of my fellow Vikings.  I survived, and I’m stronger for it.  I think maybe it’s time to get back to work, back to the journey, and back to service.  Or maybe I’ll just listen to Amon Amarth music.  We’ll see.

 

 

 

P.S., If you are up on your classical mythology, you’ll know the term “chthonic.”  What you may not know is the Chthonic, in addition to a mythological reference, is a great metal band from Taiwan.  The more you know…

A Nightmare on Marathon Street

Go, team, go!  As I write, several of my teammates are running in the Vancouver (B.C.) Marathon.  To be clear, I am not.  While I am capable of both writing and running, I am not able to do so simultaneously.  The marathon I am training for is two weeks away, so I am in the tapering phase of training.  Tapering is my favorite part, as it requires running less each day up until the actual event, and I am quite adept at sitting still.

I have been part of this informal team of runners for less than a year.  Several of us – those who are available and interested in running the pre-selected distance for that day – meet up run on Saturday mornings to support each other through the miles.  It was during these Saturday runs that I discovered I had joined an all-women running team.  If I hadn’t been invited to join, I might have been considered creepy.  I’m not sure what it says about me that I was asked to join.  Hopefully it means I’m likable, but I’m willing to settle for “non-threatening.”

During those Saturday morning training runs, we talk a lot to pass the time.  On a recent run, Sally described having a stressful dream about her upcoming marathon, in which she encountered obstacles keeping her from getting to the starting line on time.  While I’m familiar with anxiety-ridden dreams, I didn’t recall ever having one about a marathon.  In fact, my problem is the inability to sleep the night before a race.  Bad dreams about races has never been an issue, until two nights ago.  Friday night, my dream went like this:

The morning dawned beautifully with clear, sunny skies.  It was warm, but not too warm: perfect running weather.  I had no trouble getting to the starting corral, and when the air horn sounded the start, I was happily off and running.  I was firing on all cylinders, striding confidently, when I thought to myself that I shouldn’t push too hard.  If I needed to take a little break, I should go ahead and do it so I would have energy left for the later miles.  So, rest I did.  A few miles into the marathon, I stepped off the course, walked into my house, which was located nearby thanks to the geography of dreams.  I plopped down on the couch to watch TV with my family.  Suddenly, I began to feel anxious.  I should not be taking such a long break.  I scolded myself and returned to the course.  Two miles later, I returned to the house and resumed my place on the couch.  While I was frustrated by my own sloth and knew I should get moving again, I dozed off.  When I roused myself from my nap, I was just plain angry. How could I be so lazy?  I was competing in a marathon, for crying out loud!  I stood up and walked to the window to see how the race was progressing.  Looking outside, I saw it was now snowing.  The sunny skies had clouded over, and the streets were covered with an inch of snow with more coming.  Damnit!  How could I let this happen.  It was time to get back in the race.  I was determined now, and I reached down to re-tie my shoes when – SNAP! – the laces on my right shoe broke.  Aaaargghh!  Of course, being that this was a dream, my shoes were impossibly complex, requiring a very specific lacing configuration made up of two inch strips of shoelace woven carefully through a series of metal eyelets.  Naturally, I didn’t have any spare high-tech lacelets laying around the house.  Oh, fresh Hell!  My family gathered around, offering to help but having nothing useful to contribute.  “Duct tape!” I shouted angrily.  I decided I could strap the shoe to my foot with duct tape.  Mom went to the cupboard and retrieved a roll of the sticky gray tape.  I wrapped it around the shoe hanging loosely on my foot, and with my shoe more or less affixed to my foot, I headed out into the snow to finish the marathon.  With luck, I would resist the urge to return to the living room a third time.  

That’s when I woke up, sweating and breathing hard.  It took a full minute to relax and accept the fact that it was all just a dream, a horrible dream.  I hope my teammates are having a much better experience this morning.  I checked the weather report, and there’s no snow in the forecast.  As long as they don’t stop into my house for a nap, they should be fine.  I’ll get the duct tape ready just in case.

Run, ladies, run!