A stippling of
sun has managed to fight its way through the pervasive marine layer holding out
the promise of an afternoon of tanning to those who are so inclined.
Even St.
Arbuck’s is quiet.
The usual crush
of boisterous customers has been replaced by a sedate and studious group, each
of whom appears to be focused on terribly important things happening on their
laptops.
Truthfully, the
only audible conversation is happening at a table ten or fifteen feet away
between two twenty-something young men and since both are basically
loud-talkers, I cannot help but hear.
I keep hearing
the word “church” a lot, followed by “youth,” so my assumption—call it an
educated guess, if you will—is that one young man is interviewing for a
position as youth leader at a church where the other young man is already on
staff.
I find it
interesting that there has been not one mention of “program,” save in the most
derogatory of terms.
Their focus is
on people...not programs.
And I find that
extraordinarily admirable.
Far too often
those involved in ministry blindly follow a marketplace mentality that seems to
dictate that all people, regardless of demographic, must be managed.
Perhaps I’m just
getting cranky (I can hear my dulcet-voiced beloved intoning, “Getting cranky?”) but I profoundly
resent the idea of “people management.”
I even question
the whole idea of “human resources,” because the moment you concede that people
are “resources,” you have conceded that they are expendable.
“But, they
require management!” goes the argument.
My opinion—and
this is my opinion—is that you manage
resources and develop people; nurture
people; speak into the frozen wasteland of their hearts and stand in amazement
as treasure rises out of the rubble of broken dreams and failed expectations.
What if—and this
is a “what if” of massive proportions—but, what if corporations, churches
included, began hiring people not on the basis of what they could do for their
company, but what the company could do to fan their spark of potential into
flame and thereby reap exponentially higher returns.
Some would label
me as being hopelessly naïve, and perhaps rightly so.
But I can’t help
believing that there are better ways of doing things than what is already being
done, because what is already being done isn’t producing exactly stellar
returns.
Mornings here in the OB are shrouded in a
thick, ensorcelled, vaporous canopy of fog compelling in its ability to cause
one to slow down; to regard one’s surroundings, and the people who dwell
therein, with a more comprehending and compassionate eye.
I had leisurely pedaled my Kronan Swedish Army bike (which I’ve
dubbed “Kronan the Destroyer” for its sixty pound frame) through the mist on my
way to a favorite beachside St. Arbuck’s for a cuppa Joe and morning writing
session.
Across the street the swell was building and
surfers were out in force, clad head to toe in wetsuits that fit like a second
skin.
Truthfully, they fit some better than
others.
Way better!
There is much I could write on that topic,
but will spare you for now and save it for another time.
St. Arbuck’s was vibrant with local color
and I collected my medium coffee, with room for cream, found a table out of the
general flow and sat down to observe the drama.
There is always
drama...you just have to be willing to watch for it.
In the corner, a poorly dressed, unkempt
hearing-impaired man signed prolifically and energetically, leaning forward in
his seat to be more clearly captured by his iPhone’s facetime feature. His smile and glowing countenance suggested that
there was possibly woman on the other end of the call—a very special woman, by
the looks of it. It occurred to me that the iPhone technology had opened up a
whole new world of communication possibilities to hearing-impaired people the
world over. Thank-you Steve Jobs!
A young man dressed-out in the dark blue
uniform of the US Coast Guard entered hurriedly, ordered quickly and departed
hastily, the carry tray and four cups of coffee indicating that he was on
“special assignment.”
A group of three preteen girls—actually, now
that I think about it, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a preteen girl by herself as
they tend to run in packs—entered with mom in tow jabbering excitedly. It
seemed they were about to have their very first coffee experience. Mom caught
my gaze, rolled her eyes conspiratorially and shook her head. The eye roll is a
universal symbol of parental expression. Transcendent of language, color or
creed, it is a way of saying, “We’re in this together.”
The young man sitting at an adjacent table,
dressed in an ill-fitting shirt, slacks and mismatched tie, sweated his way
through a job interview. His nervous fiddling with said tie seemed to indicate
that the interviewer’s rapid-fire questions were having an unsettling and
frustrating effect. Obviously in a role-playing situation, the interviewer
finally said, “Okay, suppose I were to tell you that your product isn’t
something I’m interested in purchasing. How would you respond to that?” The
young job seeker’s mouth opened and closed wordlessly for a few seconds.
“I...guess...I...I would thank you for your time and wish you a good day,” was
all he said before hanging his head and shaking it slowly, his lips compressed
into a tight line. “Blew it again!” the unspoken pronouncement of his heart.
A pretty young woman with freckles,
strawberry blonde hair and bright blue eyes sat down at the table right in
front of me. One by one she placed a ceramic mug, a container of hot water,
with the string from a tea bag dangling over the side, and an iPad onto the
tabletop in precise order. Just as she sat down, her phone buzzed and she carried
on a brief conversation in a heavy Scottish accent all the while arranging and
rearranging her items. The mug was moved forward and then back; now juxtaposed
with the hot water container, now in front of it; the iPad lined up with the
near edge of the table, now the far edge; back and forth, back and forth, her
hands in constant motion. Looking up from her call she saw me grinning, smiled,
blushed charmingly and shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “Can’t be helped. It’s
what I do.”
One of the baristas, with elaborate neck
tattoos creeping inexorably toward a flawless face, walked outside carrying a
tin of water for a homeless man’s dog. The scruffy creature sat forlornly, tied
to a table and awaiting its master’s return. It wasn’t a handsome animal, equal
parts this and that, but she treated it with tenderness and respect the effects
of which were immediate. With a bounce in her step the barista came back
inside, and as she passed my table said, “I love dogs.”
As a result of fairly miraculous financial circumstances, we are staying in Ocean Beach this summer.
Well, Cheri is "staying," while I commute back and forth to Las Vegas on the weekends.
We're not on vacation (see previous post regarding, "Getting It Right").
But it's an outright blessing.
The house we're renting is a classic, 1921 Southern California beach bungalow complete with all of the original windows, doorknobs and hardwood flooring.
It's a jewel.
All five hundred and twenty-one feet of it.
I've told you before about the marvelous, eclectic ambiance of Ocean Beach so I'll not repeat myself.
What I haven't told you is that Ocean Beach has a rather infamous skunk!
I'm not kidding.
Whether it's one skunk, or an entire litter is open for discussion.
The reality is that said skunk makes an appearance at the most inopportune moments.
Like last night.
One-thirty AM.
I awoke from a most pleasant dream to a most unpleasant odor.
It was fetid, rank, and not a little bit nauseating!
The skunk was on the prowl.
The skulking OB skunk is notorious for filling the community resident's olfactory senses with a scent so foul as to make one believe that the portals of hell have opened and one is poised on the precipice between the living and the dead...and the dead are winning!
Hurrying to close each and every portal to the outside world, I collapsed back into bed hoping against hope that the midnight marauder would veer from its plotted course and savage someone else's nostrils.
Alas...it was not to be.
Seemingly, the dread creature camped out just below our bedroom window, savagely intruding upon our nocturnal slumber.
In the face of such blatant intrusion, I did what any rational, cognitive adult would've done in similar circumstances: I closed the window in fondest hopes that by ignoring the repulsive creature...it would go away.
Ocean
Beach is, in my experience anyway, unlike any other southern California beach
city. You see things here—things readily accepted as being a part of normal
life—that would cause alarm or, at the very least, arouse interest elsewhere.
Take,
for example, my experience a few mornings ago.
The
beloved and myself were out for a morning stroll—an early morning stroll...too early for my taste—when we spied
something that, even by the bohemian, counter-culture, über tolerant standards
of Ocean Beach, caused me to do not a double, but a full triple-take.
Now
that I think about it, it could be the first one I’ve ever executed in my
lifetime.
For
there on the sidewalk in front of us, not twenty feet away, was a man with a
pet on a leash.
The
pet was a cat.
A
cat!
You
might as well know that I’m not overly fond of the species, although as a child
I once owned an exceptional feline of whom I was quite fond. He lived to be
seventeen. The rental house where we are summering—is that even a word?—is host
to an ancient twenty year-old kitty. I like that cat as well.
Anyway...
It
was upon spying the unusual sight that the aforementioned triple-take was
executed. I mean, come on now, walking a cat on a leash? Cats? The same
creatures notorious for ignoring even the simplest commands requests of
their masters, owners, staff?
You
know, as I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I’ve got the scenario all
wrong: Perhaps it was the cat who was walking the man.
That’s
it.
It
has to be.
There’s
simply no other explanation.
Of
course I did once observe two women here in Ocean Beach pulling a duck...wait
for it...in a stroller.
Heck, I even see him in the afternoons
and evenings; always with a different group of people; always with a few recent
creations tucked under his arm.
I won’t tell you his name, because I
know he treasures anonymity.
He was a Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine
Corps; so, I’ll just call him, “Gunny.”
Gunny’s an artist by trade, although he
didn’t start until he retired from Corps at the age of fifty.
He’s good.
Very good.
Although to look at him you’d never
expect it.
Creeping up on seventy, his longish
white hair mostly hidden under a New York Yankees cap; always wearing a
Harley-Davidson leather vest, jeans and motorcycle boots.
I was just noticing this morning that
his face sort of matches the leather vest in that both have seen more than a
few miles; hard miles; miles that leave their mark.
But his smile, ah, now that’s something
to talk about.
It’s a smile that says of all the
hardscrabble landscape over which life’s journey has taken him, “You will never
beat me, so you might as well stop trying!”
It’s a smile that is so very evident in
his art—art that depicts a world in which there is a settled peace won through
battles dark and bloody.
Colorful, bursting with passion and
realism, I’ve seen Gunny sell quite a few pieces to interested customers over
the years.
I even saw him do a presentation to a
gallery owner once.
She loved his work, and while I didn’t
get to hear the end of the conversation, I’d be shocked if she didn’t agree to
an exhibit.
He’s that good.
And, unlike many in his age group, he’s
very tech savvy.
He will quite typically have his iPhone
and iPad on the table in front of him and be busily engaged in the utilization
of both devices.
Today he convinced a man far older than
himself to purchase an iPad.
Apple should be paying this guy a
commission!
People of his generation should be
paying attention, because as George Burns so poignantly observed once, “You
can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.”
Gunny is mostly alone these days.
His wife left him for another man when
he was still on active duty, and it just never made sense to him to remarry.
His two children, and six grandchildren
are all on the east coast, and even though they exchange visits regularly, it
doesn’t really help to fill the holes loneliness has gouged into his day-to-day
life.
I asked him once what fueled his art,
and he said, “Hope.”
When asked to elaborate, he simply
replied, “I fought in two wars and trained Marines to fight in two more. As a
result, I’ve seen enough despair to last me the rest of my life. If my art can
give people hope, then I will have served my purpose.”
I feel the same way about my writing.
I’m sure there are those who wish these
stories that fill the pages of Snapshots At St. Arbuck’s had more of an edge;
that there would be a “realistic ending” every once in a while.
But life is filled with bad endings;
life is filled with “edgy” realism...why add to it?
I just choose to focus on the
indefatigable hope that seems grafted into our DNA.
And even if it seems life has kicked
the hope right out of you, it’s still there; and in response to the right
resonance...it will rise up.
I feel that’s my role in life...to
release a “sound” into the universe; a sound that will penetrate to the core of
the most tragically broken heart and see it resonate with hope once again.
It's another soft, misty morning here in Ocean Beach, where I'll be spending much of my summer--three days a week here and four in Vegas.
This trip, however, is for ten days, the express purpose of which is to provide uninterrupted time to complete editing on the first draft of, "Ring Of Roses," a novel that I and my co-writer have been working on for quite some time.
Editing--and more specifically self editing--is a huge part of the novel writing process. And, yes, I am fully aware of the tendency some writers have to over-edit, but I assure you that is not the case here. This is all about getting it right. If the foundation is crooked, the entire structure will be unsound.
When this draft is completed, I'll go back to the beginning and start anew with the goal of creating a final draft. And hopefully by summer's end we'll have a manuscript worthy of publication.
For those of you who don't know, "Ring Of Roses" is essentially a love story about two people caught up in a domestic terrorism plot. Both tender and taut, it details the resiliency of the human spirit when faced with insurmountable odds and indescribable evil.
The
early morning sun danced over the ocean's surface as blithely as a bride at her
wedding reception.
Scents
of lavender, mixed with a myriad of unrecognizable, exotic tropical smells,
filled the air with a potpourri of fragrance enlivening my senses and
refreshing my soul.
St.
Arbuck's in Ka'anapali, on Maui's north shore, was filled with the pleasant
buzz of conversation typically found among those who have nothing better to do
than enjoy a perfect day in paradise.
It was
definitely what Kenny Chesney would call the "coast of somewhere
beautiful."
So far
Maui was definitely living up to its billing.
I sat
there with my beloved who, true to form, was navigating her way, quite
successfully I might say, through the morning Sudoku while I perused the local
news.
Have I
mentioned that she has now graduated, at long last, to real coffee?
Well,
'tis true.
I feel
so triumphant.
My eye
happened to fall upon an article about a high school band in the south that had
been bilked out of several hundred thousand dollars by a nefarious travel
agency in Fiji. The money was to have paid for a year-end trip to the islands.
Turns
out the money, instead, paid for a rather lavish lifestyle for the travel
agency owner.
I love
bands.
I may
have mentioned this before, so stop me if you've heard this (actually there's
nothing you can do to stop me—others have tried), but I grew up in a small
town.
Like
10,000 residents small.
At the
age of sixteen I joined the local community band—the Watsonville Community Band
to be precise.
The
band's musical prowess was the stuff of legend among those of us inclined
toward wind-driven instruments.
Which
compels me to ask: What do you call a wind-driven pitch approximator?
Give
up?
A
trombone.
(Cue
groaning)
Since
you didn't know that, you most likely don't know the range of a tuba—about
thirty yards if you've got a good arm.
I'll
stop now.
The
band had an aggressive concert and marching schedule and an ambitious young
manager.
We
triumphed over most of our competition in parades up and down the state of
California and, as a result, were invited to march in the International Lion's
Club Parade in Chicago, IL, which, as it so happened, was scheduled during the
World's Fair in Montreal, Canada.
We
decided to do both.
It was
pretty heady stuff for a generationally and socially diverse bunch of amateur
musicians from a tiny agricultural community.
Chartering
a United Airlines flight, we headed for Chicago.
I’ll
never forget that flight!
A
spontaneous jam session broke out at thirty-seven thousand feet as the
majorettes danced in the aisles with older men whose inhibitions had been sent
packing by a seemingly unlimited supply of free booze.
I had
just graduated from high school and was far too lacking in confidence to join
in the festivities, although seeing Darlene moving fluidly up and down the
aisle wrapped up in the arms of one drunken dancing fool after another was
sheer torture.
Darlene!
She of
the ten thousand-watt smile, dancing eyes, perfect body and personality that
seemed to brighten any space she occupied.
Oh,
yeah, I had an adolescent-sized crush on Darlene.
What?
Of
course she didn’t know it!
What,
do you think I was crazy?
You
didn’t go around telling major babes like Darlene stuff like that!
I mean
she was the love/lust object of every guy in the band.
Old,
young...it mattered not.
Panting
from all the exertion of having just danced with fifteen or twenty men, she
plopped down in the empty seat next to me.
My
heart nearly stopped!
She
sort of stared at me for a few seconds, her lips stretching into that crazy
smile. “So, you going to dance
with me, or what?”
I
can’t remember exactly what I said but in some form or fashion I indicated that
while I would have loved to accommodate her request, I was, sadly, forced to
decline on the basis that my dancing resembled an octopus on crack!
She
pouted for a minute before saying, “Nope! Not buying it. Come on.” And with
that she pulled me to my feet—which suddenly felt like the size of beer
kegs—hauled me into the aisle and, well, she danced like a whirling dervish
while I held on for dear life at once both terrified and enraptured by being
that close to the one and only Darlene.
When
we were done, we returned to our seats and she looked at me in silent appraisal
long enough for me to be quite uncomfortable.
Finally
she said, “You’re pretty cute.”
Once
again, I can’t remember exactly how I responded to her compliment, but I’m
certain it had something to do with blushing and babbling something profoundly
incoherent.
We
talked for the rest of the flight, the dirty old men casting frequent resentful
and envious glances my way as they tottered down the aisle toward the restroom.
We
talked about life, plans for college—she had none, I was going away—a guy in the
drum line she kind of liked and whom I instantly hated; music, dancing and
whether Taylor’s Hot Dogs were, in fact, the best hot dogs on the planet.
They
were and still are.
She
finally fell asleep with her head on my shoulder.
I fell
asleep feeling like the luckiest guy on the flight.
At one
point she woke up a little, looked at me, smiled a little and then promptly
fell back asleep.
Wow!
I’ll say it backwards...woW!
When
we got to Chicago we marched down the same street that in a year and one month would
be filled with thousands of war protestors battling the Chicago police and
chanting, “The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!”
In
eight months, Martin Luther King would be assassinated, followed two months and
two days later by the death of Bobby Kennedy.
Of
course, we knew nothing about those tragedies then; tragedies that would
forever change the trajectory of our nation.
We
played on the grand staircase of the Conrad Hilton hotel; ate a lot of good
food; the adults drank, and drank and drank; Darlene danced, and danced and
danced; my obsession grew and...well, you get the picture.
The
night before we were to leave for Montreal, we had a party.
A real
blowout!
The
afternoon of the party, I was out by the pool when Darlene—clad in a bikini
that did things to my hormonally charged eighteen-year old system that
should’ve been criminalized—sat down on the lounge next to me.
She
did that silent appraisal thing again and then said quite matter-of-factly,
“You’re my date tonight.”
And I
was.
Gladly.
We had
a blast.
At the
end of the evening when I walked her to her room, she unlocked the door and
then turned suddenly and kissed me full on the lips.
“You’re
such a sweetheart,” she said a bit breathlessly, while cupping my face in both
of her hands. “You are kind and caring...and cute. Don’t ever change.”
And
without another word, she went into her room and shut the door.
I
stood there reveling in that kiss—a kiss that I would remember for years to
come—breathing in the warm, velvety summer air and, although I didn’t know it
at the time, making a decision that I would, indeed, attempt to be a caring and
kind person for the rest of my days.
Darlene
and I remained friends for the rest of that trip and very good friends
thereafter, at least until I went away to college.
“What
are you thinking about, baby?” My beloved said softly, jolting me out of my
reverie.
“Oh,”
I said. “Just thinking about how random moments in time can completely change
the trajectory of a person’s life.”
“Do I
sense the genesis of a new story?” she asked with that dazzling smile of hers.
