Heavy Metal is the Ambassador of Love and Kindness

This is a story about heavy metal love; about what unconditional acceptance looks like; about the best community on earth.

On the right is my longtime friend Jameson, 11, son of the incomparable Cyndi Day; I’m on the left; in the middle is my favorite local metal band, HEXENGHÜL. This picture from Friday illustrates the kind of love and joy I’ve only ever found in the metal music community.

Over summer, Jameson turned into a massive Slayer fan. I didn’t do that! He did it on his own! But it’s been fantastic to talk Slayer with this kid! “Did you know Tom Araya didn’t even know about heavy metal when he joined Slayer?” The kid is full of fun facts and enthusiasm!

He wants to see Slayer (or more likely Kerry king) play live in the worst way. But people on the autism spectrum like Jameson is can be overwhelmed by the noise and lights and press of bodies. But me being me, all I want to do is find ways to say yes, to empower him. So I hit up Hexenghül. Explained the situation and asked if I could bring this young man to one of their practices. I figured since they’re walking distance from my house, and since there wouldn’t be an audience, it would be a great way to ease him in to a metal concert. If he got full, we’d bail immediately, building trust and confidence. We could work up to small local shows and eventually to Kerry King.

The enthusiasm I got from the band, both individually and collectively, reminds me of the global family metal has built. “This kid wants to be one of us?” their response communicated. “Of course we want him! Bring him, we’ll welcome him with open arms.”

And so I did. And goddamn if they weren’t the kindest, nicest, most welcoming people I could have hoped for. But I know these people, and I had high expectations – expectations they blew away. And for his part, Jameson Was There For It. He headbanged, jumped around, threw the horns, fist bumped, and hugged in his ear muffs (black and red to match his Slayer hat, Slayer sweatshirt, and Slayer t-shirt) the entire set!

The love I felt in the murderbasement practice space is something I’ll take to my grave. It absolutely poured off singer Rhiannon when she sang directly to him; the way bassist Zac spoke to Jameson between songs showed such care; and I don’t know if they were able to identify it at the time, but the way it seemed to me was that guitar player Kaleb Makai and drummer Jacy weren’t playing for Jameson; they were playing the young versions of themselves they saw in Jameson. I could be reading more into it than was there, but if you could bottle what I felt radiating off them in there, you’d never have to work another day in your life.

After the show, we all sat around and ate the drummer’s pretzels and talked Slayer, Metallica, and concert experiences as equals. Equals, cuz my young friend got his first concert experience Friday night, and he’s one of us as much as any of us is. The course of Jameson’s life was unalterably changed Friday night because four kind, beautiful people opened their space and their hearts to a kid they didn’t have to. Jameson’s first impression of of a metal show is unalterably one of love and acceptance. That’s the archetype for him because Hexenghül is made of shiny, kind people. I love them so much for it.

There are no better people on earth than Hexenghül, and to say I’m grateful they’re in my life is a good start.

They’re playing Halfway to Halloween @ Humdinger Brewing SLO on May 4 if you’d like to meet them. It’s a 21+ show, so Jameson won’t be there, but I will be, and I hope you are. Bring some ear plugs (or hit me up if you forget), enjoy some delicious beer or seltzer, and come find out what heavy metal love looks and feels like.

The Ground Floor of Self Care

One of the most important, formative, and possibly life-saving philosophies of my life came from my mom. It was Mom’s Four Rules for Better Mental Health. Here they are:

Every day, get some good exercise

Every day, get good nutrition

Every day, do something to move your life forward

Every day, give yourself the opportunity for good sleep

But times change and language drifts. If these rules are going to help anybody else, they needed up an update. Gran’s Four Rules to Better Mental Health is too quant, too folksy, too easy to dismiss; and rules are something many of us rebel against. But everybody understands self care.

And so now we have The Ground Floor of Self Care.

I think every other bit of self-care we do out there is at best duct tape, at worst mindless self-indulgence, if your foundation, your ground floor, isn’t under control. Getting your nails done, giving yourself a food reward, relaxing on the couch with a beloved show, that’s all self care for sure. I’ve found them to be all but meaningless for me if my ground floor isn’t in order.

So I have these ideas, but my graphic arts skills aren’t great. I reached out to Juno, who designs posters for Gala, among other things, and whose work I’ve loved since the instant I saw a first draft of a poster idea. I knew their style would do what I hoped for, and it was an absolute privilege to have their hands all over these words.

It turned out better than I hoped, and I was pretty optimistic! This graphic representation of the rules that formed the foundation of my mental health straight up made me cry in a parking lot. Juno brought such beautiful life to this philosophy, and it took me right back to being in my teens, my 20s, when being me was the most difficult and I wished I wasn’t. When my heart and mind lay flat on the floor inhaling the odor of dusty carpet and wondering if there was even enough hope to hope for a silver lining.

When things were at their worst, I stuck doggedly, sometimes mindlessly, to these rules.

I remember doing push-ups in my room not because I wanted to, but because I knew my body could do it and this was a rule to follow. And if there was hope, some day I might be glad I’d done the push-ups. Besides, it wasn’t like I could be more miserable than I was.

I remember making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that tasted like ashes because I put my faith in these rules to carry me through – if there was hope, it could only work if my body worked.

I remember writing on a computer, in a notebook, as both a fuck you to the entire universe including you (I’m better now), and also as a way of maybe putting the words eating me up inside on the outside instead. Stick to the program.

And I remember developing tools to sleep. I didn’t know I was inventing meditation, but rather than let my self-loathing and fear and misery scrape around and around the inside of my head, I would sort of recite or watch my favorite movies scene by scene inside my head. If I filled my head with the Terminator, there wasn’t room for terrible self-talk, and I could drift off.

And over the following 30 years or so, not much has changed but the language. These four rules This philosophy continues to be the foundation my mental health is built on. When times get hard, when my intellectual and emotional bandwidth is at its weakest, these rules this philosophy remains a sort of minimum level of existence for me. And times inevitably get better, I am inevitably once again so grateful to my mom for developing it.

So take this philosophy, and take this graphic. Get it printed at Kinko’s or Staples and make it yours. Let it help you develop the habits, discipline, and foundation you need to get through, to be the best version of you to date. If the world can be better with me in it, then it can damn well be better with you in it, and I want the best version of you we can have.

Start on the ground floor.

I Am a Solid Block of Wood

My entire life, I’ve never ever felt attractive. I’ve cleaned up nicely, but I have never felt like I was attractive to anybody the way other people might be attractive to me.

This, in spite of all the evidence. Why?

Let’s get a thing out of the way. I know that I have a symmetrical, pleasing face. I’ve always known that. But I’ve also always known that you don’t make fun of people for things they can’t control: they wear glasses; they have only four fingers on one hand like that one girl from fourth grade; they have a disability. That’s off limits. Unlike, say, a bad haircut or liking Nickleback. You can make fun of that.

So, fine, I’ve got a pretty face. I’ve always sort of rejected that. I knew I was ugly on the inside. My pretty face has, to me, always been a near-literal veneer over an ugly inside.

It’s only with the help of personal growth and hindsight I know that my ugly inside was little more than insecurity, a lack of education, and being raised on god’s love which we all know is conflicting and contradictory in order to keep its followers from self-actualizing. Self-actualized people rarely need god’s love, you see.

It really messed with my self-image, and I’m only now getting out from under that boat-anchor and seeing my actual value for what it is.

So, I’ve always viewed my pretty face and good hair as things I can’t control, and thus, worthless. But they’re there, and they’re real, and I had to incorporate that into my self-perception. So I visualized it as a thin veneer over an ugly, valueless… whatever. The picture in my head has always been sorta kinda a moldy styrofoam-haybale thing. If you sanded just a little bit, you’d find garbage just below the surface. As a defense mechanism, as armor, through my teens and 20s, I was a garbage person. I just put it out there so you wouldn’t bother sanding through the veneer of good looks, which I thought were valueless.

Being a human sure can be hard and confusing, even when you have all these advantages.

Anyway, about ten or twelve years ago, I realized all the people I admired the most were nice, so I made the conscious choice to also be nice. It’s taken a while, but here I am! You can’t be on a journey of self-improvement, do the things I have done, be surrounded by the people who surround me, and continue to see yourself as anything other than one of the good guys unless you’re deliberately lying to yourself. I am absolutely one of the good guys! I’m not perfect, but I’m trying. And I’m someone you want on your team, in your army. It feels good. I like me.

I haven’t thought of my insides as ugly in quite some time, but I’ve never let go of the idea of my physical attractiveness being anything other than a veneer.

Until last month.

I started working out hard. Lifting heavy, eating well, drinking less, and putting on a lot of muscle. I intuited, but didn’t consciously know till just a few days ago, that I was choosing my physical characteristics. I now understand I’m choosing to make my outsides match my insides. This is what I had to do to let go of the veneer idea. Sure, I still have a face that looks good and which I have no control over, but now I have a body that I can control that also looks good.

I finally feel like my whole self is indeed a whole self without a pretty veneer. You cant sand through me and find garbage just below the surface because I am good through and through. The outside of me is actually a good representation of the inside of me. And the parts I have no control over? That’s fine too. I match.

It’s really weird to think this thought, but I’m finally comfortable with the idea of somebody judging this book by his cover. I stand up to scrutiny, even my own.

It’s been a tough journey with a lot of hard work, luck, and support. But I’m ready to accept what my very best people have been saying all along: you’re as lucky to have me as I am to have you.

Let’s do a selfie.

Raise Your Voice… Again?!

On 5 September 2023, another group of about four bigots went to the Atascadero Unified School Board meeting to pick on a trans high school girl for daring to change clothes in the girls’ room, as is protected by California law.

Interestingly, these guys decided to voice their… concerns despite being told via email and at the beginning of the meeting that this right is protected by California law. One woman called on the school board explicitly to break the law. Nuts.

Clicking here will show you my portion. I was the only ally to speak, though many showed up. I’m proud of what I said, and if my words can help you to speak up and out against hate, I encourage you to use them.

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Bewilderingly, I am here yet again because I am a cis-gendered, straight, white male, and I enjoy certain privileges that, if I were not a cis-gendered straight white male, I would want to enjoy anyway. Privileges my LGBTQ neighbors still don’t get to enjoy.

One of those privileges is being able to change clothes in peace.

Somehow, we’re able to talk to our youngest children about where babies come from without talking about sex organs or intercourse. But in the conversation about changing clothes for PE, we can somehow talk about nothing but sex organs. It’s as if this isn’t about living in peace, but about having somebody smaller than ourselves to bully.

The first big Greyhound-orange bullet point on AUSD’s website reads “no bullying.” I can only hope that applies to every student, not just the approved ones. And I hope that applies to the teachers, administrators, and to you, the school board itself. Please don’t allow yourselves to be bullied into doing anything but what is best to allow every student grow into the best version of herself, just like the law AB 1266 requires.

There’s this saying. We live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. The young woman in question tonight is exactly who that saying is about. She is brave beyond measure to pursue her best self in the face of this hate. And if she is to be truly free, then we will do whatever we must to be sure she can pursue that best self safely. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness after all.

And young lady, if somehow you hear me, please have hope, be brave. Don’t let their fears make you afraid. There’s hope they’ll change.

Raise Your Voice

On August 15, 2023, a handful of about four bigots went to the Atascadero Unified School Board meeting to complain about a Pride flag a teacher hung in her classroom. Myself and 33 other people attended that meeting and spoke against them.

Clicking here takes you to my portion. It’s about 2-1/2 minutes long. While I varied from it slightly in real life, I’m including the text I wrote. If you’re an LGBTQ+ community member or ally, feel free to borrow as much as you’d like from my text. Public speaking is scary, and if my words can help you, please use them.

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My name is Creig P. Sherburne. I have lived in Atascadero since 1996 and my daughter attended Atascadero Unified schools from Kindergarten until she graduated high school in 2018.

I am here because as a straight, cis, white male, I enjoy many privileges that I would want to enjoy if I were on the LGBTQ spectrum. For example, I can hold my wife’s hand or kiss her in public with a zero percent likelihood of getting beat up. LGBTQ people don’t enjoy that particular privilege. There is a non-zero likelihood they will get beat up for holding hands or kissing in Atascadero.

As a GALA volunteer and ally who has been part of this community for some time, it’s been my observation that the Pride flag is a symbol for everybody. The flag is a rainbow, a spectrum, representing the full spectrum of what it means to be a human on Earth. And what it means is don’t be rude. It means “in this space, anybody can hold hands with anybody who wants to hold hands with them and not get beat up as a consequence.”

And that’s it. It means, “here, everybody is safe. Including people like me, straight, cis white men.” To take any other meaning from this flag seems, at best, disingenuous to me.

Everybody in this room is standing on the shoulders of giants. On the shoulders of people who paved the way to make their lives easier and better. Mrs. Pence is a giant. And all of AUSD can be a giant, upon who’s shoulders the most vulnerable of students can stand if you’ll let them. Please choose to be giants.

Go See Some Art, Everyone

The other day, I got to see a ton of photographs taken by 7th and 8th graders on display at Studios on the Park, and I was blown away. I encourage anybody, but especially photographers, to go take a look at this one. It’s so good, I decided to write a letter to Studios on the Park to tell them about my experience. This is the letter. I hope you’ll make the time to go enjoy this.

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Greetings!

I was at opening night for The Eye of the Next Generation exhibit, and I loved it. I wanted to share a couple thoughts I had.

First, I’ve lived in SLO County since 1996 and am a semi-pro photographer. My most well known image is a picture of Bishop’s Peak and it can be found on the back of your SLO County library card (or on Instagram for you non-readers 😊 ).

I loved this showing. I loved it. I saw so much raw potential, enthusiasm, and absolute disregard for what you “should” be doing. As a whole, this show is punk rock as hell in the best possible way. I suspect Henry Rollins himself would be moved by what he would see at Studios on the Park today.¹

I saw a great many images that really spoke to me of the limitations of childhood. Pictures that would have been so much better if the photographer had more agency over his or her life and could go back to a spot at a different time to capture different, better light. But that photographer is beholden to an adult with an adult agenda, so the kid got the picture available right then and there.

I love that narrative. I imagine a young me absolutely knowing I can get a better picture and begging to stay, but my parents saying it’s really good as it is, being encouraging and loving while at the same time holding me back. I felt that frustration like a knot in my heart. I hope so hard it doesn’t prevent too many of those kids from pursuing photography going forward.

And yet.

And yet these pictures really WERE wonderful. Every last one of them with no exceptions. These kids did it anyway, despite all the limitations inherent in their age. Despite inexperience. Despite insecurities. Despite how bad it feels to submit photography to be judged.² They did it despite everything. Some of them have an eye for it, some don’t but are learning (I had to learn; I wasn’t a natural at all). They’re building a skill and I loved seeing it.

It made my heart sing to see these young photographers’ efforts proudly on display. It felt so good to be alive to see the work they’re producing right now! I’m grateful to you for providing that space for them, but I’m even more grateful that I got to go see it and feel all the feelings the showing provoked.

Thank you for the showing. Thank you for giving these kids the attention and space. Thank you for having me. And thank you for taking the time to read this.

Creig P. Sherburne, photographer
www.bigoakphoto.com

1: Infamous singer for the mighty Black Flag, arguably the most punk rock of punk rock bands; also a successful photographer in his own right

2: To this day, when I submit anything, I have to just sort of deaden my heart to that feeling of dread and inadequacy and imposter syndrome I feel no matter how strong I feel my work is. The bravery many of these kids must have had in order to submit anything at all is hard for me to fit in my heart and I honor them for it.

The Stupidest Love Language

I do not have a problem receiving doggy kisses. Not even a little bit.

One of the reasons I don’t have a problem with it is because dogs don’t have a lot. I do. I have my shop, my family and friends, alcohol, lifting weights. Dogs basically have you, walks, and meal time. Doggy kisses are a lot like when a toddler wants to give a grown-up a dandelion. That kid doesn’t have much, but wants to make an impact, so here’s your pretty weed. And look, I get why people don’t like doggy kisses, but man, what a bummer to have your beloved human reject your limited expression of love.

It makes me think about one of the many confusing predicaments about being a human on Earth. We humans tend to get really wrapped up in ourselves. Even the most empathetic of us frequently have a hard time looking beyond ourselves, the way we experience the world, and the way we think about the world. It’s easy to miss somebody else saying “I love you” via some word or deed.

It makes sense. We each have our own unique love language – that is, ways we express our love to others. And if somebody who loves us has a love language different from ours, it’s easy to miss when we’re on the receiving end. We don’t recognize it as our own, and so it falls under our radar. There’s no fault in that, but it is an opportunity for us to build empathy and maybe put our antenna up trying to be more sensitive to such things.

My biggest struggle in this arena is that one of the largest ways I say “you matter to me” is that I like to share the things I love with the people I love. We all kind of look for this. It’s why we watch the same shows or go to the movies and experience a film with other people. The trouble with this is that I like really terrible things. ¹

I’ve got this saying: just because somebody tries to give you a pile of shit doesn’t mean you have to take it. I usually mean that in regards to emotional abuse, but it turns out that because I like such terrible stuff, it also means I’ve been giving people permission to reject my biggest love language for years. And I can’t help feeling like a dog with a heart full to bursting who’s not allowed to give kisses.

The thing is, I can’t blame anybody. It’s not your fault you don’t like the horrendous shit I enjoy. But I do enjoy it. I genuinely love it! Not ironically, because I’m gonna die and I don’t want to spend my time liking things I don’t like. When people don’t like what I like, I get defensive, I feel like I have to justify it. From my perspective, I’m having my love language rejected. Intellectually I know that’s not what’s going on, but my heart just doesn’t understand that. I get pushy and I try to sell this thing to people who don’t want to buy. And I can tell you, that’s no way to sway people to your way of thinking. Winning by attrition is not a win. But it also means my love language – sharing the things I love – plus the things I love being awful equals one of my biggest flaws because the result is I push people away.

There are like 14 different solutions to this problem, and sadly none of them are as good as you just realizing that I am the repository for all things good in the world. I’m mostly kidding, of course. Mostly.

The big takeaway here is that I tend to process best by writing or explaining. ² Maybe you’ve noticed that about me. So this is me trying to do better by understanding myself better. But it’s also me asking you to be forgiving when I screw up and do the hard sell on something you don’t care about. It’s an apology for all the times before and all the times to come.

I’ll make you a deal: I’ll try hard not to push the stuff I love on you if you’ll try hard to think of that pushing as doggy kisses: not particularly welcome, but coming from a place of love.

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1: A limited list things I like and wish I could share with you, in no particular order: Heavy metal including Fear Factory, Ashes of Ares, Devin Townsend, God Forbid, and Mechina, to name but a few; TV shows including Ash vs. Evil Dead, Rick and Morty, Dream Corp LLC, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, and Reno 911; movies including Fight Club, all the weird esoteric time travel sci fi shit Rick and Morty kind of makes fun of; exercise, including backpacking, hiking, running, lifting weights and maybe cycling again if I can ever get out of Atascadero which is one of the worst cycling cities in the world; wood working; whisky; burrito bowls.

2: I don’t mansplain. I know I over-explain, but I promise it’s not mansplaining. I don’t over-explain because I think you’re dumb. You’re not, and I know it. I over-explain because I know I like awful stuff and I just assume you have no interest and thus no understanding of whatever it is I’m trying to explain.

In Praise of ‘American Psycho’

American Psycho came out May 13, 1997, a week after my 17th birthday. Man, 1`7-year-olds are idiots. I knew Jerry and Doyle had re-formed the Misfits, but being a young dumb metal and punk fan, I was totally against it. Glenn 4 eva!

Keep in mind that Caroline Records released the gorgeous sounding Static Age in 1996, so I’d been listening to that bad boy all year, and it’s fantastic! In 1996, I’d also picked up all three Samhain records at a used CD shop for about $20 total. I was sort of blown away by Initium and November-Coming-Fire. Final Descent had some good moments, I guess. I deeply prefer the vinyl versions of the Unholy Passion songs.

Point is, I, like so many of us, had a bit of hero worship for Glenn going on, and I was against the Newfits.

But I found myself at the record store with birthday money and there was a Misfits album I didn’t know about! And it had a song called Walk Among Us on it. Also Crimson Ghost. Obviously it was real, so I bought the shit out of it!

I listened for the first time excited for new Misfits music, but didn’t know it was the Newfits, and was against the Newfits. And I was blown away by how good it was!

To this day, I feel that American Psycho is kind of like if you took the first three (or four if you count 12 Hits from Hell, which I do, and which, if you haven’t bootlegged it yet, you should) Misfits albums and averaged them out. It’s just absolutely quintessential Misfits music to my ear. God damn I love these songs.

Graves was a breath of fresh air. He didn’t sound like Glenn, but he fit the music beautifully! And if you haven’t bootlegged Evilive II, it turns out he delivers the Glenn songs beautifully, too. Doesn’t sound like Glenn, just sounds great. (You should absolutely bootleg that one too.) I was won over. A lot of us were. And that there’s still a Glenn vs. Graves debate says everything it needs to.

More than any other record, I like how American Psycho sounds like a band effort. On Hate the Living, Love the Dead Doyle and Graves really shine. Speak of the Devil has Jerry’s bass driving the sound and sounding like a million bucks. Resurrection showcases Chud’s drums. And I’m not even going to talk about the masterpiece that is Dig Up Her Bones. The songwriting is absolutely killer all the way around. It’s been 26 years and there isn’t a single song I skip. And the sound of the album is just awesome! The mid-to-late-90s is sort of my favorite era for the recording of punk and metal music. Songwriting and performances aside, this era’s use of classic and new technologies to record was just magic, and American Psycho absolutely benefitted from coming out during this time.

I got to see the band perform in San Francisco on the Famous Monsters tour and they absolutely tore it up! My goodness, they were a powerhouse! But Jerry is basically a terrible decision maker and Graves is basically an idiot, so it wasn’t gonna last. The Meep Meep Podcast interviewed Dr. Chud about Cuts From the Crypt [link], and Chud said he never understood why they did Cuts From the Crypt instead of just recording another album. He said that lineup had another four albums in it! Man, I regret that. I wish I lived in that alternate universe where Graves or (arguably better) Mike Hideous still fronted the band, which had just put out its ninth album and was on top of the world.

I got to see Michale Graves on the American Monster tour performing both American Psycho and Famous Monsters in their entirety. It was wonderful to hear those songs! I got to see the show after he came out as a racist, but before I knew he came out as a racist. So I got the best of both worlds. I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known – most of us didn’t go for that reason, and as a result I got a semi-private show. There were only about 50 of us in the audience, and it was great! Too bad he’s a racist idiot and I don’t want to support him any more. Still, Dig Up Her Bones live with an audience that knew how cool it was we got to hear it was remarkable.

If you’ve gotten this far, then you probably feel the way I do about American Psycho, and I’d love to hear how you were introduced to it.

I Am Nothing Without You

I make beautiful things and I take beautiful pictures. This isn’t something I was born with. It’s not like I have a naturally beautiful singing voice or anything. I’ve worked really hard to develop these skills. I’m proud of them and I’m proud of the wonderful things I make. It wasn’t no big deal. It took years and countless failures to get here.

I’m even proud of the failures. I grew better with every single one of them. Every failure taught me something critically important and I am a better photographer and a better wood worker as a result of them. A lot of them were funny, too.

But I am not a self-contained unit. Without the absolute army of experts I am so grateful to be surrounded by, I could never have grown into the creator I am. I would be nothing without the support of my sister and brother in law. I would never have had the opportunity to fail if my wife hadn’t made the sacrifices and compromises she did, or if she had not helped create those opportunities. I wouldn’t be as safe in the shop as I am if I hadn’t had Cyndi’s or Lizzy and Evan’s kids to teach and who’s fingers I was responsible for. My designs wouldn’t be nearly as good without my dad’s solid modeling and machine shop experience or his deeply impressive collection of tooling.

It’s never been all about me. Since the beginning of time, humans have built tribes, networks. I’m no exception. When I think about myself, I don’t think just about how I look or sound; I don’t think only about my accomplishments or skills; when I picture myself in my mind’s eye, I can’t help but picture my tribe, my army of seamstresses, plumbers, metal workers, welders, painters, cooks, electricians, physicists, graphic (and otherwise!) designers, biologists, brewers, farmers, engineers, chemists and every other skilled person I have backing me up, available and willing to help lift me up and make me better than I could possibly be alone.

I think we’re at our best when we acknowledge and embrace our interconnectedness and our dependency on each other. And I think we all want to. I know that I love bringing what I’m good at to others’ projects. I love being a valuable member of other peoples’ armies.

Building skills may be one of the least selfish things we can do because sharing those skills and elevating each other is one of the ways we can all show love and fight back against hate and darkness.

I sincerely hope that you’ll take that natural talent you were born with and train it into a skill. I hope you’ll take that passion you have and turn it into expertise you can use to make a corner of the world measurably better. Because we can make the world better, one photograph and one pretty box at a time.

The Book of Hope

FICTION

I woke up to the sound of junkies fighting again. I was almost used to it. I looked at the time on the tiny window on my closed phone. Close enough, and it wasn’t like I was going to get any more sleep with the ambient junkie noise. I grabbed my keys, clothes, shower kit, and towel to go wash up. Carefully locking my room behind me, I headed up the hallway toward the gym-style bathrooms. Sinks and toilets on one side of the central wall, shower stalls on the other. 

I showered and got dressed in the stall. My building was not the type you walk back to your room wearing only a towel in. I’d never tried it, but I knew it would be a great way to get… I don’t know what, but being vulnerable there was not a good idea.

It was Thursday, my Monday, and I was ready to go to work. Days off were pretty hard for me because I was very poor and there wasn’t a lot of money for luxuries like food.  Monday meant the best meal I was going to have since my Friday. I didn’t eat breakfast because I’d eaten my last nothin’ dog — a piece of bread with ketchup and mustard since I didn’t have any more hot dogs — and headed to the bus stop via the back door because I owed the front desk guy rent.

I liked the bus. It was basically comfortable and basically safe. I liked to sit as close to the driver as I could because sometimes while fooling with their wallets and bus passes, people would drop money. Yesterday, I’d spent most of the day on the bus and the subway. I had a bus pass, so rides were free, in a way, and it beat staying at home. God, how had home become a room in a hostel-turned-crackhouse for me? I don’t even do drugs. Not even back in college. 

On the bus, I pulled out the Book of Hope. It was a small black notebook with my former university’s logo custom engraved on the front. Back then, it was the Book of the Future, but life has a way of turning the future into a distant memory, far away and impossible. At the beginning of the book were things like interview tips and school project ideas and plans for after I graduated. Flip through the pages and you’d find my plans for my own actual house without roommates because my job was going to be awesome. I planned to have a modest car for commuting, and put all my extra money into vacations and gear like bicycles and camping stuff. I was going to volunteer. I was going to have an awesome single life before settling down and maybe finding somebody to start a family with. Now all I care about is my next meal. The future ain’t what it used to be. 

Yesterday while I was on the subway, I wrote down some things I would have again when I had enough money and my own place. I’d have so much food! I would have a pantry full of cans and cans of food, stuff that would never spoil. I would get fresh vegetables from farmers market again! What I’d written down was “enough food” but I knew that what it meant was getting home from work and having choices of what to eat. I wouldn’t miss nuthin’ dogs. 

It wasn’t always this way. I’m smart and my parents loved me. But halfway through my junior year at university, my parents and little brother were killed in a car wreck. It turned out that my parents were pretty deep in debt, and after the dust settled with insurance and everything else, I had $900 in the bank and a pair of suitcases. I guess I should have found an attorney, but I was nineteen. What I found instead was a relationship with a charming psycho; then I found my world getting smaller and smaller and smaller. By the time I should have graduated, my life was intolerable. I knew I was going to die in this relationship, and I knew that psycho would kill me if I tried to leave. I remember laying in bed with my shoulders and neck aching with tension and dread logicing that if I was going to die, it might as well be aimed at freedom. And hey, maybe I’d even get away.

It turned out comically easy to get out. If I’d known it was going to be that easy, I’d have left a lot earlier and taken a lot more with me. When I had the chance, I took a car and a backpack I’d squirreled away and ran. I drove as far as I could on a single tank of gas and then sold the car for next to nothing to somebody who wasn’t too worried about the title and took a bus the rest of the way to the city.

It’s not easy to start over when you have nothing. I had no safety net. No $900, no pair of suitcases. My backpack had a change of clothes, some protein bars, a water bottle, a library copy of Andy Weir’s Artemis, the Book of Hope, and exactly $134. Selling the Lexus got me an extra $1,000, but $1,000 goes quicker than you expect when you’ve got no income and no safety net and no refrigerator.

The bus driver announced my exit. I pulled the cord and got off, walked half a block to Lou’s, a low-rent beer and pizza dive. I was really looking forward to sneaking a calzone with sausage and bell peppers. My stomach growled as I turned the corner. Lou’s looked closed, which it absolutely should not be. It was one of those food-as-an-afterthought places where people drank Bud Light at 9 a.m. The lights were off, the door was locked, the checkerboard curtains drawn tight. Oh, and there was a handwritten sign on the door: “closed for further notice.” Lizzy, the morning girl, must have written that. What was going on?

I checked my phone. I’d gotten a prepaid as soon as I landed in the city. I would never let myself be so isolated ever again. It had 33 minutes on it, so I called Lizzy, the only work contact I had in there. She answered on the first ring.

“Oh my god,” she said, her voice high and excited, “did you hear what happened?”

“No,” I said. “I saw your sign.”

“Oh my god,” she said again, “ok ok ok, you know how Lou is nuts?” I made a sound. “Well, he got arrested Tuesday night for robbing downtown Lou’s at gunpoint!”

We worked at the Paper Street Lou’s. Downtown Lou’s wasn’t actually downtown, it was just closer to the center of the city. Lou robbed his own place and got arrested? Can you get arrested for robbing yourself? My stomach dropped. Tomorrow was supposed to be payday.

“Do you know if we got paid?” I asked, already knowing the answer. 

“Nope,” came the cheerful response of somebody who didn’t depend on that money to buy hot dogs. “When he was arrested, the cops found some organized crime ties. Everything’s shut down hard.”

Oh no. 

I hung up and went around back in hopes of getting in to make my calzone. No luck. Everything was locked up tight. Geez. Did it get worse than this? I was absolutely out of money, but I could have survived till tomorrow on calzones. But now my paycheck had evaporated, I had no calzone, and I’d eaten the last of my food yesterday, not counting ketchup and mustard back in my room — a room I couldn’t even get back into without passing the front desk guy who knew I owed rent. I had no friends, nowhere to go. So I got back on the bus and I went in circles.

As long as you don’t make trouble, the bus driver doesn’t really care if you hang out on the bus. I kept quiet, minded my own business, and kept my eyes peeled for discarded donations. After five hours and four circles of route, the guy across from me got up and left eight dollars on the seat! I snatched it up quick and waited a few more exits to get off at a grocery store. Just because I was rich didn’t mean I wanted to spend twice as much for the same stuff at a corner store. I bought a package of hot dogs, some bread, an apple, and splurged on some relish and a store-brand protein bar. You always get store-brand. They’re totally the same thing and way cheaper. Heavy with groceries, I was kind of excited to get home to make a hot dog! 

I still had to wait for the front desk guy to pass out. He would, but I had to kill an hour. That’s why I bought the protein bar. I was hungry, and wouldn’t be able to wait for the hot dogs without getting something else in me. Back on the bus, I munched the bar and sipped my water and started to feel better.

Ok, maybe this wasn’t so bad after all. Lou’s was kind of like a pizza place, and all the pizza places knew each other, right? I could get a new job tomorrow by going to a pizza place that knew about Lou! And I had hot dogs to look forward to! Ok. No problem. I could manage this.

To pass the time, and because I was feeling hopeful, I opened up the Book of Hope. I wrote down “pizza places know each other. Get a new job at a new pizza place tomorrow!” And I started to imagine myself going in and asking to talk to the manager. I’d explain about Lou, and that I was good with pizza and salad and changing kegs and I could start right now. I made a list of pizza places I knew about, and even wrote down some I noticed out the bus window.

I flipped back in the Book of Hope to just five weeks ago, to just before I’d stolen the car and left. 

“I will be loved, not owned.” I’d given an entire page to that sentence. “Remember: nothing is worse than not being yours.” That thought was its own page, too. 

Still hungry, but sure the front desk guy would be passed out, I got off the bus to walk the two blocks back to the dump I called home. 

I’d been gone all day, avoiding the place. And all day is a lot of time, plenty of time for all kinds of disasters to happen. It’s enough time, just to pull an example randomly from the air, for your building to burn down. 

That’s not entirely accurate. It wasn’t burnt down exactly. Most of it was still standing. I guess I should say it was burned up. My building burned up. I guessed some of the junkies had a meth lab that blew up. Or maybe a couple idiots just let a cigarette going and fell asleep or something. Who knows. But I could see into my room from the outside, so I didn’t have a place to stay any more. My change of clothes had been in there. My mustard and ketchup, too. That sucked. I was homeless now. I mean, I owed back rent, but I had a key and could sneak past the front desk guy here. But no one would give me a room without money, and I had only the change leftover from my hot dog purchase. 

Great. Now I was actual homeless instead of just about to be homeless.

There were no cops or fire department any more. It was a dump that nobody cared about where people nobody cared about lived. Nobody was there. I went in to go look. Probably everything had been picked over, but maybe I could find some canned soup or something. I mean, it was wrecked, but not wrecked. 

I walked through what had been the wall into my room. Everything was damp, but smelled like campfire. My bed and bedding looked unharmed, but soaked. Maybe I’d look for some dry blankets since I got to be homeless now. My change of clothes were ash. My ketchup and mustard too. Good thing I had relish, I guess. Not that I had anywhere to cook my hot dogs now that the communal “kitchen” was no more. I guess it’s a good thing hot dogs are made of 100-percent artificial additives and only sort of need to be cooked.

I decided to keep on looking. Stuff was about to get really bad for me, and any asset I could find might be the difference between… Well, I didn’t know what, exactly. I just knew that if things looked bad before, they were desperate now.

I went room to room. Everything was soaked, even rooms that didn’t look like they had any fire damage at all. I went back to my room and wrung out my blankets and hung them on the door. I figured I might find a bag I could throw them into and they’d dry eventually. I continued my search. None of the rooms had much more than my room did. Some of them had a ton of trash and detritus. One room had what I thought for sure was a dead person in the bed, but it turned out just to be twisted blankets and garbage. 

I found myself in a corner room with two missing walls. The room was in absolute shambles, but there were a bunch of cans on the floor! Score! I gathered them up, but quickly realized I would need something to carry them in. I had my backpack, and despite being homeless and jobless, I wasn’t quire ready to give in and ruin my backpack with burnt-smelling stuff. I switched from looking for food to looking for bags, purses, or backpacks. The corner room was deluxe, it had an extra room with a door connecting them. It was missing a big portion of its exterior wall where it had fallen into room. But laying under the wall was a backpack. A basic black Jansport pack like from junior high and it was pretty stuck under there. But I knew a decent backpack would be super useful going forward, so I decided to get it. It was full and difficult to unwedge from its home. But it was sturdily made and I got my shoulder under the wall so I could push it up a little bit, and I got the bag out. 

I’m pretty glad I did, too. That bag was full of money. So. Much. Money. Bundles of $20, $50, and $100 bills. The bag was crammed full of more money than I had ever seen other than in the movies. This asset was much better than the canned food, but it was also much more dangerous. The money belonged to someone, and when money’s involved, everybody turns into the mafia. I put the new backpack into my old backpack, and began to carefully get out. This bag made me a target, and did not want to be found with it. I decided some canned food might actually be handy after all, if only for cover, so I grabbed an armload of it and got out of the building. I walked unmolested to the bus stop where I left the food and boarded. This bus would take me toward downtown, and I felt like being in public was a good idea. 

I was jittery for the twenty-two minutes it took. Every time the bus picked somebody up, I eyeballed them and got ready to run. Nobody cared about me. They just went about their business. But the downtime on the bus gave me time to think. I began planning.

I dug into the new bag, still inside my old bag, and pulled two twenties out and palmed them. Nobody was watching, but I kept the money hidden. Once downtown, I got off the bus and hailed a taxi. 

“Where to?”

“The Greyhound station.” I didn’t know where it was, but I figured a taxi driver would.

“From downtown? That’s gonna be like twenty bucks, kid.”

“Here’s forty.”

“It’s your money,” he said. “Get in.”

I got in. 

I had no idea how to tell if I was being followed. I didn’t even try. I didn’t think anybody had followed me from the building, nobody cared about me on the bus, and then I was in just another taxi. The driver kept to himself, and that was good. I was stressed. 

He dropped me off at the station and offered me change, but I told him no thanks and he took off. Inside, the board said the next bus to the regional hub would pick up in fifty five minutes and tickets would be sixty two dollars.

I went into the deserted bathroom and locked myself in a stall. I began counting the money. I decided not to trust the bands that encircled every bundle, but counted each bill individually. I kept counting and counting. My heart beat faster and faster. By the time I was done taking every bundle out of its backpack and putting it into mine, I counted $19,960. Twenty thousand dollars, including the forty I’d paid the taxi driver.

My vision blurred. Twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars. It wasn’t like I was set for life or anything, but Maslow and I both knew my physical needs were set. I could eat anything I wanted! I could buy some new clothes. I could go anywhere. I could maybe finish my degree. I could have the future back.

I went back out and paid for my ticket from a bored cashier. I walked across the street to the obligatory all-night diner and ate an actual meal. It was the only actual balanced meal I’d had in five weeks. It was the best ham and eggs anybody has ever tasted. I ate every bite. It made me cry a little bit, sitting there in the well-lit booth eating breakfast food that somebody brought to me in exchange for money, like normal. 

I paid just like a person who wasn’t in extreme poverty, and then went out to catch my bus.

This bus was taking me to the regional hub where I could decide on a final destination. I waited until we were firmly on the interstate before I dug the Book of Hope out of my backpack again. Once at the regional hub, I could go anywhere, but I didn’t know where yet. My belly was full for the first time in forever, and the bus was mostly empty, warm, and safe. Nobody was fighting, but a teenaged couple were giggling together a few seats behind me. Anybody who says money can’t buy happiness has never been hungry or homeless or hopeless. Two hours previously, I had been destitute. One bizarre turn of luck and the dogged determination to free a backpack, and I was on a bus back to the future. 

I clicked open my pen and began starting over. 

Forgiveness is the Key to Fitness

It used to be that I could drop everything and run six miles, no problem. I was never fast, but I didn’t have to stop, either.

There was also that time I bench pressed 250 pounds, 1-1/2 times my own body weight. I did mud runs, I ran every 5K in a 30-mile radius, I threw my nieces and nephews into the pool.

And I will again.

The last year has been hard on my fitness. Covid was actually really good for my fitness. I got resistance bands and tricked out the back yard and lifted a lot.

Me at age 40 in October 2020. Covid was good for me!

But then things went a little sideways for me. My wife began school and my home responsibilities went through the roof. This is absolutely not to lay blame at my wife’s feet. But changes have consequences. I knew that my responsibilities would increase while she was in school – I was and am still ok with that. But I think it’s important to mention because in my case, her schooling had consequences. A lot of us are in this situation from things other than school: loss of a loved one can change things up; the birth of a child; moving homes; changing jobs; all sorts of other things I can’t think about.

And the point is that there’s stuff that’s out of our control which affects us. I think one of the most important tools we can give ourselves when it comes to fitness is forgiveness. Being gentle and forgiving of ourselves as we’re on our fitness journey. We’re just human after all, and we have so many responsibilities other than fitness we’re on the hook for. And while hiatus is sometimes necessary, it’s never the right choice to just give up. It’s always a good time to start or re-start, and it’s never ever ever too late.

But I digress. It’s not like the only change was my wife’s school schedule. I also started drinking a lot more whisky because whisky is wonderful stuff! And it makes doing the dishes and laundry suck a lot less. And it’s pretty hard for me to drink whisky and then lift weights or run.

For months, I spent most evenings sitting on the couch watching cartoons (seriously, are you familiar with Archer? Or Dream Corp, LLC? Or Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell? My goodness, I wish I could watch all those for the first time again) and gained 10 pounds.

But back to forgiveness, even at the time of sloth and cartoons and whisky, I knew that our lives are lived in seasons. Right then, things were stacked against me. I could have put my head down and really just powered through and done the work, but that’s the stuff resentment is made of. So I just went with the flow, enjoyed my whisky, and remembered that school will be over and the season of purposeful physical fitness would roll around again.

And it has. I’ve gotten back to running. It doesn’t take much time, and makes a big impact on how I feel. Yesterday was my first second run in months. The first run is always so hard, you never want to run again. I’ve had quite a few first runs over the past few months. They all sucked. But yesterday I had a second run, a run where I didn’t lose all the gains I made on the first run to time. I’m so slow compared to yester-year, I’d be embarrassed if I weren’t forgiving.

But the thing is I’m doing something. So what if I’m slow? So what if it’s only three miles and not six? So what if it’s less than I used to do? This is what I’m capable of doing today, and I’m doing it. There’s no use in beating myself up because I’m doing less than before. It’s not like I can do anything about that other than exactly what I’m doing. So I’m doing it and I’m not going to stop. Maybe I’ll get back to sustained 8-minute-miles, maybe not. Maybe I’ll get back to 10-mile runs. Maybe not. But I’ve chosen to be proud of what I can do and what I am doing, and not beat myself up for what I can’t do any more. This is the lesson.

The thing is, life is about managing discomfort. To a certain degree, we get to choose what kind of discomfort we want, but we absolutely cannot live a life free of discomfort. For a while, I was going through a time of the discomfort of poor health. I wasn’t strong and I gain weight in my belly and my face, so I look like I’ve gained a bunch of weight. Pants don’t fit, shirts don’t fit. It sucks.

So now I’m going through the discomfort of winning my health back. I’m picking running back up, doing push- and pull-ups, and cutting my whisky intake dramatically. That part can be frustrating. Tea is pretty good, but not that good. And truth be known, I don’t really want to live in a world without whisky. Seriously, why bother at all at that point? But I’d like to lose an inch or two off the waistline more than I’d like to enjoy a whisky, so that’s the discomfort I choose.

Also, it helps to have a supportive wife for this. I will actually say out loud “I feel grumbly because I want a whisky, but know it’s not the right thing right now,” and she’ll be awesome and remind me that I’m doing the right thing for myself. I totally suggest having a supportive wife if you can get one.

So it is that I begin again with baby steps; being kind and forgiving to myself; remembering that it’s regularity of exercise that matters, not intensity; be proud of current accomplishments instead of being discouraged by doing less than before.

It’s hard, but so is everything. With this version of hard, I get to keep roughhousing with my nieces and nephews and enjoying the way it feels to be strong. I hope that no matter what your health, you’ll find your way forward and that you’ll be kind to yourself as you go.

On Blaze Bayley’s ‘Promise and Terror’

I’ve been with Blaze since Iron Maiden (I was in camp Blaze because it meant I got Iron Maiden and, you know, different Iron Maiden (Bruce and Adrian) to listen to) and have been been listening to Promise and Terror, 2010, since it came out on Day 1. I’m gonna wax poetic and if there were a TL;DR, it would be: “I like this album a lot.”

In 2010, I was 29 and still on the upward slope of my cardiovascular health. In fact, when the album came out, I was training for an olympic distance triathlon. I went running like four nights a week, something like 6 to 10 miles a night. I was using an iPhone 3GS with wired headphones I would tie in a knot and safety pin to my chest to keep the cord from going everywhere.

My first listen to this album was while running the golf course the Monday night it came out.

As long as I live, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to disassociate that record with the feeling of the cold air on my skin and burning my lungs. The smell of the damp grass, the lights of the houses on the south side of the course, the visual of the white concrete paths winding through trees and acres of lawn. The deep dark colors and deeper shadows.

Each night we look up at the same sky as I ran the 3/4-mile from my house to the golf course entrance. In holy flame I must be purified as I ran down that first long downhill. Fight kill fuck eat at about the 6-mile mark powering up what I think of as The Fuck You Hill for the second time. My god.

I was actually a bit dubious about this album. The Man Who Would Not Die, 2008, was a huge favorite of mine. The band just absolutely killed it. Holy shit, it was a furious yet somehow clear and civilized record. Robot, right? God damn. How could they possibly beat that? I don’t want to say I was eager to switch to Kamelot if Promise and Terror sucked, but I was prepared on some level. And instead, Blaze blew me away.

Blaze has always been surrounded by world-class musicians and this record was no exception. I was very sad when this lineup dissolved, but the current band is awesome so it all turned out ok. But the vibe the Promise and Terror lineup had was incredible. I swear the drummer thought he was in a death metal band, and it elevated all the songs. To my ear it’s every bit as heavy as a band like Machine Head, but without the harshness.

The second half of the record is absolutely devastating. I didn’t know going in that it was Blaze mourning the death of his wife, but I remember on that first listen feeling the crushing weight of loss and pain and the craziness which loss and pain can bring. It sounds clear to me that Blaze was using music – lyrics and performance – to get these too-big feelings out of his too-small body and heart. I don’t know if it was effective therapy or not, but I do know that the listener can’t help but end up in a pretty dark spot while listening. Blaze’s delivery of his hard truth came down like a ton of bricks.

Henry Rollins once said he had a 100-minute workout tape of all sad songs so he could get that “damn you, woman” power going on. This was that for me. Blaze’s loss was my loss, and it powered me in a way I’ve never experienced quite so intensely since.

I remain blown away by Promise and Terror to this day. I won’t say it’s his best, or even my favorite (that changes from week to week or month to month). But it holds a unique and wonderful spot in my heart. It was amazing on Day 1, and it holds up all these years later. I hope that if you haven’t given Promise and Terror a listen lately, you’ll do it soon. You’re in for a treat.

More Than A Meal

I spent half of last Saturday butchering chickens. I ate one tonight. Eating this meal was different from any other meal I’ve ever eaten.

My lovely friends Lizzy and Evan have dedicated their back yard to farming. They grow some of the best vegetables I’ve ever eaten. I didn’t think I liked cauliflower till I had theirs, and then I fell in love with it! All my eggs come from Lizzy and Evan’s yard, and they are exceptional. Home grown eggs don’t look as uniform as those you get from the store, but the color and size and funny shapes are part of the fun. And the taste…! Once you go farm fresh, it’s difficult to go back to store-bought eggs. Store-bought taste as bland as the uniform shells look, all lined up identically in their crate.

A few months ago, Lizzy got 20 freshly-hatched chickens and incubated them in her garage in a little kiddy pool under a heat lamp. Once they were old enough, she delivered them to the yard. She kept these chickens separate from the egg-laying chickens. She told me it was so the meat chickens didn’t eat all the egg chickens’ food because they are jerks.

At different times and on different days, the chickens would have full-run of the yard and eat all the bugs and stuff. Though upon reflection I don’t know what “and stuff” means. I guess they just ate bug sand did chicken things. Their brains are pretty small, but they always seemed pretty happy to me. My wife and I would go have meals in the yard with Lizzy and Evan, and we’d throw the remains of the meal into the chicken pen and all the chickens would scramble for it and eat the hell out of whatever you threw over there, including chicken.

Nobody was ever like “dude, my chicken is so smart!” Not ever.

Then the day arrived when it was time to turn the chickens into food.

The way I grew up, in the Greater Hellish Los Angeles Megalopolis, my siblings and I thought going to the Christmas tree farm was like going camping. I think the only people who grew up further away from anything like a farm are maybe New York City Jews, but I’m basing this entirely upon movies.

In an effort to kill the chickens as humanely as could be, Lizzy and Evan bought a kill-cone. It’s a galvanized steel cone you put the bird into upside-down so its head sticks out the bottom. You cut its throat and it bleeds out quickly and without thrashing around. And while I watched, I didn’t have it in me to actually kill a chicken this time.

But I did watch. For many years, participating in such a thing has been on my list. I eat meat and I don’t think it’s unethical. But I do feel I owe it to both the chicken and to the people who process chickens to do it myself at least once. That’s why I was there. That’s why I’ll go and do it again – out of respect. This was a living thing. Perhaps its spark of life was dim, but it was a spark. I believe I owe all the animals who become my meals the respect of being able to take their life myself. I’m not there yet.

Once killed, with head and feathers removed, it was a lot easier for me. I got somewhat competent at gutting chickens, and will become more competent still. They have this organ, a gizzard, I think it’s called, that helps them grind up their food. It’s full of literal dirt and rocks. That’s a weird organ to remove.

Tonight, a couple hours before I wrote this, I sat down to eat a chicken dinner, my first ever meal made of an animal I butchered.

And I now understand where the tradition of praying before a meal comes from.

It is no small thing to kill an animal, clean it, and prepare a meal from it. As I sat down at my kitchen table, I felt an urge to say a few words about the chicken. To thank it. To honor it. In an etymological way, it makes praying before a meal make sense. There really is a sense of gratitude, debt, and honor. In a way that’s almost entirely unlike eating a fast food burger, I think you can’t help but want to thank and honor the animal who died so you can live before you eat it. (It’s just as easy to imagine this feeling being coopted by Christianity: don’t thank the chicken, thank the lord.)

I did thank the chicken. I also thanked Lizzy, who spear-headed this entire operation. She gave me the opportunity to do something I’d never done, the opportunity to honor my food, and in the doing, find a previously covered up part of my own spirituality.

The meal was absolutely delicious.

 

The Mirror Never Lies

Earlier this week, I made it home before my wife. I walked the dog around the high school, our normal one-mile walk. I picked up trash like I do, my dog sniffed everything and peed on everything and tried to eat bad rotten things she shouldn’t and I yelled at her, and then we got home. I took a shower and had a shave. I was pretty happy with the shave. I told myself next time that I wasn’t going to shave, the mirror was going to shave for me while I watched. That seemed idiotic, so I played rock-paper-scissors with myself in the mirror and the loser had to shave. I threw rock.

The mirror threw paper.

I lost?!

I felt my jaw drop, but I didn’t see it drop in the mirror. I looked pretty smug in the mirror. Do I always look like that? Jesus Christ, I need to work on humility and gratefulness. My poor wife.

“That’s not how it works” the mirror said.

“The fuck!” I half screamed. My voice was pretty high.

“That’s not how this works,” the mirror told me again. “I get it, it’d be cool if you didn’t have to do the work, but that’s not my job. I’m not supposed to do the work. I could get pretty busted just for telling you this stuff, but I know you, you’re a good guy. I wanted to let you know where things stood.”

I mean, I was just kidding with myself when I wanted the mirror-me to shave. Somebody has to think I’m funny. My wife says I’ve got a junior high school auditorium full of kids in my head and whenever I say anything “funny” they all stand up and cheer for me. Even at the time, I genuinely didn’t think “mirror me can shave while I just hang out” was stand up and cheer funny, but I also didn’t expect my reflection to correct me.

You know what’s cool though, is I’m losing weight. All this meal prepping, running, and weight lifting is paying off. It’s easy to kind of turn a blind eye to your reflection like normal, but when the reflection is moving independently of you, it’s a lot harder to remain in denial. You see you differently. I absolutely do not recommend it. But I could see as my reflection moved independently of me, I wasn’t just being optimistic: my shoulders were getting bigger and my belly was getting smaller!

Or maybe I was just going crazy. You know, talking to my reflection and everything.

“So I’ll just shave like normal then?” I asked the reflection.

“That’s right,” the reflection replied. “I’m here to help. I’m here to show you progress. I’m here to guide you, to a certain extent. It’s subtle, as you can imagine, but it’s important. And while I technically can shave for you, I absolutely will not. It’s worth more than… Well, it’s worth a lot.”

I was once a professional explainer. I worked for the local newspaper. Being a small town paper, I kind of thought of it as a newsletter in a lot of ways. So to fill space, I would talk to people who knew things I didn’t know anything about and then explain that stuff to my readers. How can somebody get arrested for resisting arrest and nothing else? How does the water treatment plant work? I found out, and I told those stories, and they were popular. So this weird little half-assed explanation my reflection was giving on why he can’t do physical things did not fly with me, as he should have known.

“What do you mean ‘it’s worth a lot’?” I demanded. “That’s the kind of answer I expect from…” I had to think hard. My life is full of smart, capable people who give pretty good answers most of the time. “…everybody else!” I finished, lamely.

The mirror smirked, then sighed.

“Look, it’s more than a job; it’s a life, an existence,” he said. “So it’s not like I’ll get fired if I break the rules. If caught, I’ll cease to exist. I exist to do this job. If I don’t do it, I don’t exist. You’ll never notice. Another… I don’t know, soul, I suppose, a spark, it’ll come to take over this job from me in an instant. But my soul, my spark, will stop.”

Wow. Pretty big stakes. I could see why he wouldn’t want to break the rules, but I could also see the potential for abuse. So many hauntings and other dumb paranormal shit could be explained by this.

“Most hauntings and other dumb paranormal shit can be explained by people like me abusing their positions,” my reflection continued.

“Huh,” I said intelligently. I couldn’t think of any more questions. It’s been about a week, and now I have a ton of questions, but my reflection won’t answer any more. I’ve asked, but all I can do is reflect on them. Get it?

“Anyway, I like you” he said. “I wanted you to know there was a little more going on than you thought. I wanted to give you an answer.”

“Thanks man,” I said. “It really is pretty special. I hope you don’t get busted. You’re amazing!”

“Thank you,” he said. “Now, you look great. Go put some clothes on. I’m sure your wife is gonna be home soon.”

I did. And she was.

Sistem51

I bought a Swatch Sistem51 Cream (SUTM400) while in Las Vegas for an event.

I’m like every other watch guy in the world. I bought it because it was a 100% Swiss mechanical watch for $150 new. I think the word we use for that is “unicorn.”

I come at this watch as a Seiko guy. I’ve got a Seiko 5 with an automatic movement and a stainless steel case that was $97 including shipping. It’s that quality:price ratio I’m holding the Sistem51 up to.

Others have written more competently than I can about the movement. Suffice it to say that for me, a mechanical movement is essential, and this one is unique and cool and very, very Swatch. The clear back case reveals a movement with whimsical polka dots, but other models have other patterns. It’s pretty and delightful. The second hand appears to move at about the same rate as my Seikos: about 6 ticks per second. The movement hand winds, but does not hack.

The Sistem51 comes in two basic flavors: plastic cases and steel cases. I’d read about these watches online and had pretty much dismissed out of hand the plastic cases. But it turns out that in real life, they’re very cool.

My purchase would never have happened had I not stumbled upon a Swatch retail location while visiting Las Vegas. It was bright and fun and showcased the watches beautifully. It reminded me of an Apple Store in a way. It didn’t look like an Apple Store, but it also didn’t look like your standard watch shop with glass cases and black velvet and so forth. Counters were white, touchable watches sat upon them. Watches hung on the walls and were, again, touchable. Clerks could unlock the watch from its location and let you play with it a little. It was great!

Swatch did a splendid job as regards its retail experience. I’d never have bought this watch had I not been able to walk in and touch and feel and try on their watches. If I’d bought one of these online — and that’s a big if since at 42mm in diameter and 14mm thick they’re kind of large — it’d have been a metal one, and I would not have liked it. I tried one on and it was too heavy, felt too big. (I’m not alone in feeling this way.) On a whim, since I was there anyway, I tried on one of the plastic ones with a silicone band, and it was great! Not quite choir of angels singing through the parted clouds great, but still great enough to buy it.

The plastic case is so light and the silicone so soft, it’s not hyperbole to say it almost disappears on the wrist despite having such a thick case and large size. Being so light, the thickness and largeness feel purposeful and deliberate instead of clumsy. The watch is big and chunky like a pair of Sketchers shoes are big and chunky. It works.

The dial is printed and nice. There’s a chapter ring inside with markings on the inner slope, a feature I really appreciate. There are also six red dots on the dial. At first glance, they seem to be random, though clustered toward the bottom. It turns out those represent the locations of the jewels inside the movement. It’s a pretty nice little feature. Of course we don’t need them, but I like them.

The date lies inside a circle at 3-o’clock and it’s beautifully executed. The cut is precise and the printed border around it is spot-on.

If there’s a weak point in the overall design of this model, it’s the hands. Despite some very clear attention to detail, they feel cheap. It’s not that big a deal because it’s a cheap watch, but still. They’re just flat and square and I dunno. I’m used to my Seiko hands and these are not those.

I also imagine this watch will get beat to shit pretty quick. Maybe the case will be ok, but the plastic crystal seems fragile to me. I will not wear this watch to work lest I destroy it with a quickness. Time will tell if I’m right about this, but despite the relatively low cost and cheap vibe, I don’t plan on treating this one like a beater.

For all that, though, this is a very cool watch. I think Swatch did a remarkable thing with it. They made Swatch relevant to me without losing any of its character. I think of Swatch as inexpensive fashion quartz, but in the best way. They’ve always cheap enough you can pick one up on a whim and wear it or not as the mood suits. You wear a Swatch casually and whimsically and with a sense of fun. They’re not throwaway exactly, but they’re not serious either.

Swatch nailed the vibe here. They created a mechanical with all the whimsy and fun and cheapness Swatch is known for with a very cool automatic movement to satisfy snobs like myself.¹ It’s got feet planted firmly in both “very cool” and “toy” territories.

While it’s doubtful this watch will replace the Seiko 5 as the inexpensive mechanical watch of choice for self-identifying “serious watch people,” it’s a rad little watch. If you can get one in your hands, I think you’ll have a hard time keeping it off your wrist.

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1. It’s weird: I like quartz just fine. I think it’s a cool technology, it’s something that brought watches to the masses and lowered prices and all that good stuff. But I don’t like wearing quartz watches. I’m not sure this qualifies me as a snob, but I’m not sure there’s a better word either. ↩