for those who know what it’s like to be visible but not believed
Every day is another lesson in invisibility. Not the kind you choose, not the soft fade of a disappearing act. This is the kind handed down in glances that slide past you. In doors that stay closed just a second longer when you’re approaching. In the space you leave behind when you’re gone, and no one notices the shape of your absence.
You become fluent in the language of indifference. You learn the weight of unasked questions. You memorize the way people say “I didn’t see you there” like it’s a kindness, instead of an indictment.
There is a peculiar violence in being overlooked. Not bruised. Not broken. Just… reduced. Down to skin, down to stereotype, down to background noise. They don’t mean to erase you— and somehow, that makes it worse.
They’ll say you’re quiet. You’ll wonder if they’ve ever actually listened.
You wear shame like a second skin. Not because you earned it, but because somewhere along the way, someone handed it to you like inheritance and you forgot how to put it down.
You stand still in a world built to move around you— fast, loud, full of curated meaning. And you begin to question:
Is there something wrong with me, or is there something wrong with this lens that always finds me blurred?
You’ve learned to map your pain in silence. Each breath is a kind of protest. Each blink a refusal to disappear entirely.
There are veins beneath your skin that look like lightning— not because you are struck, but because you are always just about to burn.
And yet you don’t. Not fully.
You endure. Not in glory. Not with applause. But with defiance. The quiet kind. The kind that goes unnoticed until someone says:
“I didn’t realize you were carrying that much.”
And you smile without smiling, because you know the truth:
You were always carrying that much. They just never asked to know.
A quiet reckoning with the expectations we wear and the joy we fake.
When was the last time you were truly happy?
No— not the curated kind. Not the smile you wore for someone else’s comfort. Not the polite laugh that tasted like performance. Not the checklist joy: house, job, partner, post, repeat.
I mean the kind of happiness that sneaks up on you in bare feet. The kind that doesn’t make sense but fills your ribs like breath you forgot you were holding. The kind that doesn’t ask for an audience. Doesn’t post itself. Doesn’t need to be liked to be real.
Most days, we confuse peace with silence, and silence with defeat.
You tell yourself you’re content. That this is what adulthood looks like—responsibility, stability, being “grateful.” You wear that word like a bandage. But underneath? There’s a pulse of something unsaid. A throb you ignore until it bruises.
You smile at strangers. You meet deadlines. You show up. And in between the commutes and compromises, you start to wonder if you buried yourself in the crud of being acceptable.
The barrage is constant— what you should want, who you should be, how you should smile.
But no one ever asks if you’re still in there. Not really. Not the version of you that danced alone in the kitchen at 1 a.m. Not the you who found joy in dumb little things that didn’t need justification. Not the version of you that wasn’t tired.
You’re silently screaming. Every day. And you do it with perfect posture.
Because to speak it— to say “I’m not okay” feels like betrayal. Like failure. Like you’re too much and not enough, all at once.
But here’s the quiet truth:
Maybe you haven’t been happy in a long time. Maybe you don’t even remember how it felt. But maybe that question—when was the last time you were truly happy?— isn’t meant to shame you. Maybe it’s a breadcrumb. A way back.
Not to the person you were before the world smoothed your edges, but to the one still flickering beneath the noise.
The one who still believes in joy, even if they haven’t seen it in a while.
🪞Reflective Prompt
Take a moment. Find a scrap of paper, the back of a receipt, or the notes app on your phone.
When was the last time you felt joy that wasn’t expected of you, sold to you, or shared online? What did it feel like in your body? What part of you still remembers?
“Grandpa, I need a real story for my history project. Something about America, or the Fourth of July, or whatever.”
The old man scratched his chin, leaned back in the squeaky recliner, and smirked.
“Alright, kid. Lemme tell you how your grandma and I met. It was the Fourth of July, 1978. I was 19, dumb as bricks, and full of patriotic stupidity.”
From the kitchen, a voice called out: “Oh, this again. You gonna tell the real version this time, or your usual nonsense?”
Grandpa rolled his eyes. “It’s all true. Just maybe… slightly singed around the edges.”
It started with an idea. Not a good one. My Uncle Tommy, our genius friend “Meatball,” and I decided to put on our own fireworks show. We didn’t have proper fireworks. We had two crates of off-brand bottle rockets, a metal garbage can, a stolen traffic cone, and a six-pack of warm root beer.
Tommy swore the garbage can would “amplify” the fireworks. Meatball called it “fire science.” I just lit the fuse.
Boom.
The garbage can launched thirty feet in the air like a missile. One rocket shot sideways and hit a mailbox. Another bounced off my forehead. And one, God help me, flew straight down my pants.
I panicked. I ran in circles. My shorts were smoking. I stopped, dropped, rolled, and screamed. At some point, my eyebrows gave up and disappeared.
Next thing I know, I’m in the ER, wrapped in silver burn cream, looking like a baked potato with no dignity.
That’s when your grandma walks in. Nurse training student. Bright smile. Clipboard. Smelled like lavender and antiseptic. She looked at me, this smoldering idiot, and said, “So… was it worth it for freedom?”
From the kitchen again: “And what did you say next, hotshot?”
“I said she looked like a very clean angel. Then I threw up on her shoes.”
“Mm-hmm. Romantic.”
“Did you ask her out?”
Are you kidding? I tried. But the morphine was kicking in. I told her she looked “like a floating disinfected goddess” and then passed out while apologizing to the IV pole.
Still—she didn’t run. That’s how I knew she was special.
We kept in touch. She came to my follow-ups. I wrote her letters. She eventually forgave the vomit. We got married two years later. She even let me light sparklers at the wedding. Supervised, of course.
“Wow. That’s kinda romantic… in a flammable way.”
Exactly. So you tell your teacher this: Freedom’s messy. Fireworks are dangerous. But love? Sometimes, it starts with a bang. Just don’t put bottle rockets in garbage cans.
From the kitchen: “And tell him about the park ban!”
Is it hard to be a beautiful woman? People think you have the world at your feet. They think doors open for you, heads turn for you, and life bends around your presence. But they don’t see the trade. They don’t see the constant calibration—how much of yourself you shave off each day to fit into someone else’s frame. Beauty is not freedom. It’s exposure. A spotlight you didn’t ask for, that you can’t turn off.
You’re seen before you’re heard. Assumed before you’re known. People don’t meet you—they meet the idea of you. Their version. Their fantasy. Their fear. And if you don’t match it? You become a threat. A disappointment. A target. It’s not just tiring—it’s erasure in slow motion.
So you patch yourself together—smile here, soften there, silence the part that wants to speak too loudly. Over time, your identity becomes a kind of repair job. You keep the strongest parts in storage, hidden from view, waiting for a time when it might be safe to bring them out. You begin to wonder: Who am I without all the edits? What’s left when I’m not translating myself for someone else’s comfort?
You learn to play roles just to survive. To be warm but not inviting. Assertive, but not “difficult.” Intelligent, but never intimidating. Every room becomes a stage. Every glance is a calculation. When will it be okay for you to step out from behind their idea of you, letting you be who you are, not who they’ve imagined or prefer? How many masks do you have to wear before one of them finally feels like skin?
The tension doesn’t just live in your body—it rewires it. It clutches your voice before you speak. It lingers in your posture, in your smile that’s a little too careful, in your silence that’s mistaken for grace. They don’t see the moments when you swallow yourself to keep the peace. When you feel the full ache of being looked at but never seen.
Every day, you make choices that feel small but cost you something: how to walk into a room, how to hold your face, when to speak, and when to stay quiet. You tell yourself it’s just for now. Just until it’s safe. Just until they see you for real. But how long can you stay edited before you forget the uncut version?
The woman in the photo is not just posing; she’s done shrinking. Her posture is not elegance—it’s exhaustion turned into boundary. It’s defiance without apology. It’s a question you can’t ignore anymore: What happens when a woman stops choosing what’s expected, and finally chooses herself?
Not your version of her. Not the one that plays nice. Just her. Fully, freely, finally.
Author’s Note This piece was written for Esther’s Weekly Writing Prompt, with a word prompt from Fandango’s FOWC. Big thanks to all of you for keeping the creative fire lit week after week, day after day. These prompts aren’t just words—they’re jumping-off points, gut checks, and sometimes lifelines. Appreciate what you do more than you know. Keep ‘em coming.
Carla had felt it—long before the cliffs came into view, before the wind shifted, before the sky’s texture flattened into stillness. This wasn’t the usual Spiral pull. It didn’t lure or prod. It didn’t hum.
It watched.
She moved cautiously over the dry bluff, boots scuffing loose rock. The sea glittered far below in the late-afternoon haze, fractured sunlight spreading across its shimmering surface like a spill of silver threads. Wind carried no salt, only dust and a faint tang of rusted metal.
The silence was complete. Even her own breath felt out of place.
—
She found the camp carved into the slope of a cliffside ridge—subtle, deliberate, too symmetrical to be a coincidence. Four tents. One cold fire. A cracked solar dish half-embedded in a shallow crater.
Three figures sat near the ash pit, eyes already on her.
“You’re late,” said one. Calm. As if she had kept them waiting for something that had already happened.
—
They called themselves The Stayers.
Not cultists. Not travelers. Former closers like her. People who once twisted artifacts and left scorched geometry in their wake.
Now they did nothing.
“The Spiral feeds on choice,” said the woman with the burned throat. “Sealing. Opening. Doubting. It doesn’t care. It just counts motion.”
“So we don’t move,” said the old man. “We stay. That’s the only defiance it doesn’t know how to shape.”
Carla crouched by the fire pit. The scent of dry grass and melted plastic lingered. Spiral symbols were scratched into the stone around the perimeter—faint, deliberate, and concentric.
“Doing nothing is still a decision,” she said. “It’s still a shape.”
“Maybe,” said the woman. “But it’s a simple one.”
—
They told her stories late into the night.
One claimed a breach in Greenland had reversed a river’s current for seven years. Another swore that one seal had erased an entire language from the minds of the people who spoke it. The old man said nothing. Just stared into the ashes, lips twitching now and then in silent repetition—a mantra too quiet to catch.
Carla listened.
She wasn’t sure if they were lying. Or if truth had started to drift from language entirely.
Above, the sky stretched starry and sharp. One constellation spiraled outward with uncanny symmetry—an unnatural twist she hadn’t seen before.
She didn’t sleep. The camp felt airless. Not from lack of oxygen—just lack of time.
—
Hours passed.
She stayed by the embers.
That’s when he came.
A young man—quiet, deliberate, barefoot. No weapon. No coat. His tunic was worn thin and hand-stitched with spiral thread. He moved as if he were afraid to ripple the air.
“You’re not like them,” Carla said.
“Not anymore,” he replied. His voice was careful, almost polite. “I’m Esh.”
He sat beside her, close but not quite touching.
“You came with someone,” she guessed.
He nodded.
“My sister. She believed. Said she heard the Spiral speaking through frequencies. Radio static. Drips in the stream. She followed it here.”
“What happened to her?”
“She went deeper.” He looked at his hands, “Stopped eating. Stopped speaking. One day, she walked into the breach and didn’t come out.”
Carla tensed.
“There’s a breach nearby?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “The tower replaced it.”
—
They sat in silence for a while. The fire had died down, but heat still pulsed in the stones.
Esh leaned forward, tracing a spiral into the ash with one finger.
Carla pulled off her glove and placed her marked palm beside it. The glow from her skin lit the spiral like embers reawakening.
“It’s not random,” he said. “It’s a pattern. And the more we act, the more it learns. You twist, it adapts. You seal, it shifts. You feel like you’re resisting, but maybe you’re just… rehearsing.”
“Then why stay?” she asked.
He didn’t answer right away.
“Because it wants us to move. To respond. That’s how it grows. And the Stayers believe that if they just wait, it’ll shrink. Or forget them.”
“And you?”
“I think that’s cowardice disguised as wisdom.”
—
His eyes flicked toward her mark.
“You still feel like yourself?”
“Mostly,” she lied.
“Good,” he said. “Because when it stops feeling foreign, that’s when you should worry.”
—
Later, he walked her to the edge of camp. A soft breeze rolled over the bluff. The sky had begun to warm—not true dawn, just a faint silvering of the clouds.
“I dream in spirals now,” he said. “And I don’t think they’re dreams. I think it’s downloading us, piece by piece.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I can’t leave. Every time I try, I wake up here. In the same spot. Same sunny wind. Same sky.”
He touched the spiral mark on his chest—faded, scarred over.
“But you… You’re still moving. You’re still free.”
He pressed something into her hand. A flat stone, smooth as glass.
“Keep it,” he said. “So you remember you’re not one of us.”
—
By morning, the camp was gone.
No tents. No ashes. No tracks.
Only the stone remained—flat, palm-sized, spiral-carved.
And on its back, one word etched in ragged lines:
Start.
—
The Spiral was no longer hiding.
As Carla moved west, the terrain felt engineered. Heat rose not from sunlight but from beneath. The ground didn’t crack—it shifted. Like skin twitching in response to touch.
The cliff dropped suddenly.
Below: the tower.
Not built.
Grown.
Smooth, seamless, pulsing with soft light. Like it had been waiting underground, and the world had finally aligned to let it through.
Carla’s knees weakened.
A voice—not hers—whispered behind her thoughts:
Let me help you carry the rest.
She stepped forward.
The Spiral wasn’t mimicking her anymore. It was practice.
Author’s Note: This chapter was written incorporating Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie #429. Three episodes remain—stay tuned as the Spiral begins to speak.
Why Spirituality Still Guides Me, Even Without Certainty
Spirituality isn’t just important in my life—it’s foundational, not in a rigid or performative sense, but like a compass in the dark: quiet, steady, essential. It’s how I move through the world—not by chasing answers, but by honoring mystery and the many paths people take to find meaning.
Over time, I’ve come to see that spirituality isn’t about being right. It’s about being rooted in humility, in compassion, in the ability to hold tension without needing to control it. It’s about making space for someone else’s truth, even when it doesn’t look like mine.
A person’s spiritual journey is personal and should be respected, not ridiculed. Whether it winds through scripture, silence, ritual, or raw experience, that path isn’t mine to judge—only to witness with reverence.
This isn’t some foolish notion born from reading obscure texts. It’s something I’ve witnessed—men and women of different beliefs working side by side to feed the hungry, to care for the sick, to comfort the grieving. Not because they shared beliefs, but because they shared purpose. That, to me, is sacred.
This ideal is the basis of my forthcoming work, Understanding Without Agreement—a reflection on interfaith understanding, sacred plurality, and the shared longing beneath our differences. It challenges the notion that coexistence requires compromise and instead affirms that belief and respect can live side by side.
Spirituality shows up in sacred texts and indigenous rhythms, in Buddhist stillness and Sufi fire, even in the honest discomfort of philosophical critique. It’s not a uniform—it’s a mosaic. And every piece matters.
So yes, spirituality is vital in my life. Not because it solves everything, but because it keeps me human. It teaches me to listen deeper, to live with open hands, and to believe—fiercely and tenderly—that awe is bigger than agreement.
Is it a bunch of old men in a room, swirling sherry like it’s holy water, declaring what mattered and what didn’t with the confidence of people who’ve never been told to clean up after themselves? Do they lean back in leather chairs and decide what’s worth remembering, while the rest of the world cleans the dishes, changes the linens, and quietly disappears?
Because let’s be honest—history isn’t what happened. It’s what survived. It’s the polished version of a chaotic past, curated by those with power, perspective, and the privilege to speak uninterrupted.
But what about the ones who made that version possible?
Why don’t we ever hear about them? The people who provided the comfort, the nourishment, the spark. The woman who changed the sheets so a “great man” could sleep through the night. The friend who uttered a half-thought over coffee that later became a manifesto. The cook who fed the movement. The janitor who unlocked the building where the protest was planned. The lover who reminded someone they were human before they put on the mask of leadership.
History applauds the speech, but forgets the breath it took to say it.
We’ve been sold the idea that history is boldface names and bronze statues. But most of what matters happened in kitchens, back porches, alleyways, and hands calloused from lifting, not pointing.
We know the architects of nations. But never the bricklayers. We memorize the names of authors, but forget the unnamed soul who said something beautiful that stuck. We forget that for every “visionary,” there was someone behind the scenes keeping them afloat. Holding the ladder. Mending the net.
So no—history isn’t just written by the victors. It’s written by survivors. By omission. By spin. And often, by those who had the means to make a record in the first place.
The rest? The ones who lit the fires, bore the burdens, whispered the truths?
They became the silence between chapters. The invisible ink.
But if you look close—really close—you’ll find them. In the margins. In the echoes. In the way a melody lingers long after the singer is gone.
Because history wasn’t built on sherry alone. It was built on sweat, sacrifice, and souls that never asked to be remembered—just not to be erased.
But what happens when they get it wrong?
When, the ones holding the pen decide the truth is inconvenient? When the story is shaved, polished, and repainted, so it gleams just right in the museum light? What happens when history becomes less about remembering and more about marketing? About preserving an image, not a truth?
That’s when history turns into myth. Not the kind with gods and monsters, but the kind where the villains are edited out, and the uncomfortable questions are filed away—lost behind locked drawers labeled “context.” You know, for our own good.
And maybe they don’t mean to lie. Maybe they just optimize. Smooth the edges. Add a little glow to the legacy. After all, who doesn’t want their heroes to look heroic? Their country to feel noble? Their ancestors seem wise?
But shaping the past for the best possible result isn’t harmless. It’s rewriting the foundation while pretending the house still stands the same. It’s how entire generations learn pride without accountability, patriotism without honesty, nostalgia without nuance.
And what’s left behind in that process?
The guilt that never gets named. The reparations never paid. The patterns that repeat because we swore they never happened in the first place. The echo chamber grows louder, but the echoes grow fainter—until all we hear is what we want to hear, and not what needs to be heard.
See, history can be a mirror. Or it can be a mask.
One tells you the truth, whether you like it or not.
The other flatters you, and hopes you don’t look too close.
So maybe the question isn’t just who writes history? Maybe it’s who dares to revise it, once they know better?
Because if we only protect the polished version, if we only pass down the parts that make us proud, then we’re not honoring the past.
We’re embalming it.
And you can’t build a future on something you’ve buried just to keep the story pretty.
But what about when they don’t just get it wrong? What about when they try to remove history altogether?
Really? That’s the move?
As if tearing down a statue makes the blood it commemorates magically dry up and blow away. As if banning a book unpublishes the pain it contains. As if not teaching something means it never happened.
We’ve seen it before: whole eras scrubbed clean, classrooms sterilized, uncomfortable truths repackaged into “heritage,” or ignored entirely. Entire peoples flattened into footnotes, if mentioned at all. Because someone decided it was better to forget than to face it. Better to be comfortable than be honest.
But here’s the truth, they’re afraid of: You can’t remove history.
You can burn the documents. You can whitewash the walls. You can call it “divisive,” “unpatriotic,” or “too upsetting for children.” But history isn’t gone—it just goes underground into stories told at kitchen tables. Into songs, poems, and scars passed down like heirlooms. Into eyes that still remember, even if the curriculum doesn’t.
The attempt to erase history is always a confession. A silent, trembling admission that the truth still hurts. That it never really stopped. It’s not about healing—it’s about hiding.
And hiding doesn’t protect anyone. It just keeps the cycle clean enough to repeat.
So no—you don’t get to skip the hard chapters because they make your heroes look human, or your institutions look cracked. That’s not erasing history. That’s erasing accountability.
And let me tell you—if your story can’t survive the truth, maybe it wasn’t a story worth keeping in the first place.
Maria Popova got it right: History isn’t what happened. It’s what survives the shipwreck of judgment and chance.
So maybe it’s time we stop polishing the deck chairs and admit we helped steer the damn ship.
Maybe it’s time we stood by the dusty words in old books—the ones that dared to say things like honor, integrity, and truth. Not just when it’s convenient. But when it’s hard. When it means admitting that the past wasn’t all parades and progress. That some of it—hell, a lot of it—would’ve earned us a solid whoopin’ from our mothers, wooden spoon in hand.
So, excuse me while I go through a stack of biographies on Lincoln.
Because if we’re going to keep telling the story— Let’s at least try to get it right.
Author’s Note Forgive the rant—but not the passion. That part, I won’t apologize for. The ranting? Yeah… I might’ve gotten a little carried away.
This piece was written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge #386. I try to jump in when I can remember to pull my head out of a book long enough to notice.
Hey, do you miss me? The ache churns so slowly. We found common ground, but only after the fires. The hard part is done. Where you’d go?
I close my eyes because yours won’t open. The stillness is sharper now. Colder. Like it knows what’s missing.
Time doesn’t pass here— it gathers. Cools around me, wraps my spine like smoke.
You blinked once— and left everything behind. I don’t blame you. But I still ask.
We were never perfect. But in the spaces between the noise, we held each other like we meant it. We were one — not whole, just held.
Your memory sings to me softly— what do I go? What version of me survives without the rhythm of your breath beside mine?
I know you hide the words. You are afraid to speak. Don’t hide with me. Your actions are so loud.
Even in silence, you told on yourself. Every absence, every closed door, every goodbye you never said but lived.
Your side of the bed still curves. Like you’re paused, not gone. But I know better.
A rainbow brushed the sky yesterday. It didn’t stay. Like you — always near, never quite here.
Are these words bound to fail? Speak to me, hope, and follow through. Don’t build a future in silence and ask me to live in it.
My hope rests on every word you don’t say. But I never told you What I stood for. Have I waited too long? Did you leave thinking I had nothing left to give?
The truth is, I was afraid, too. Of saying it wrong. Of loving you louder than you could stand.
If there’s anything beyond this, I hope it’s not heaven. I hope it’s just You and me again, quiet, not pretending. Present. And finally telling the truth.
I know you were right— because my silence was gone.
In the endless debate about great guitarists, you know the names. They’re on every list. Hendrix. Clapton. Page. Santana. Occasionally, a few lesser-knowns sneak in—someone you maybe don’t know, so you check them out, nod, and go, “Okay, yeah, I see it.”
But there’s another tier. The ones who don’t make the lists. Not even the cool-guy “most underrated” lists. They’re ghosts. Phantoms. Legends whispered about in liner notes and sampled by producers who dig deeper than algorithms ever will.
Shuggie Otis is one of those.
Listening to Shuggie’s Boogie from Live in Williamsburg is like that moment in a bar when you stop in for a bite, thinking you’re just killing time. You sit down, order something greasy, maybe a beer. Then the band starts playing. No intro. No warning. You take a bite… and stop mid-chew. Fork halfway to your mouth. What the hell is happening on that stage?
You forget the food. You forget your phone. You just listen.
That’s what this track is. It blindsides you.
Shuggie doesn’t approach the guitar like a technician. He approaches it like someone who’s got something to say. This isn’t about speed or theory—it’s about attitude, feel, and intention. Every phrase lands with the kind of swagger that only comes from living a weird, sideways kind of life through music.
And the band? Locked in like they’ve been rehearsing for a world tour no one told you about. His son, Eric Otis, adds guitar textures like he’s painting in the shadows of his dad’s lead lines. Nick Otis, Shuggie’s brother, holds down drums with a groove that feels more instinct than effort. James Manning on bass is the glue—thick, steady, unshakeable.
The horns—Larry Douglas (trumpet, flugelhorn), Michael Turre (baritone sax, flute, piccolo, backing vocals), and Albert Norris—aren’t just dressing. They’re characters in the story, adding stabs and swells that make you lean in closer. And Russ “Swang” Stewart on keys knows exactly when to tuck in a note and when to let it bloom.
This isn’t a polished, clinical performance. It’s gritty. There’s some dirt under its nails. Some bark in the tone. But that’s why it works. There’s a certain beauty in letting the edges stay frayed. It’s alive. Like something could fall apart at any moment… but never quite does.
Shuggie recorded the original Shuggie’s Boogie when he was 17. Which is already annoying, because it was brilliant even then. But this live version? It’s deeper. Older. Wiser. Looser. He stretches out, takes his time, throws notes like curveballs that somehow always hit the strike zone.
It’s the sound of someone who doesn’t need to be on a list to prove anything.
If you’re into guitar playing that hits your chest more than your brain, this is your track. If you’ve ever dropped your fork because of a solo… well, maybe you already know.
And if you’ve never heard of Shuggie Otis? Good. You’ve got some listening to do.
Throughout my life, I have had numerous moments that make me smile, chuckle, and even cry. That’s not unique — we all carry those. So, I won’t go there. Instead, I’d like to discuss something else. Something quieter, but deeply personal.
The moment a story begins.
It’s not always dramatic. Sometimes it’s just a flicker — a stray thought, a memory, an odd image that won’t let go. But for me, that moment is electric. It’s the exact point where imagination kicks in, where the real world and the possible world start to blur. It might come during a walk or while staring out a window. No fanfare. Just that quiet spark that tells me: there’s something here.
That’s the kind of moment I treasure. Because from there, anything can happen.
Most of my story ideas come when I first wake up. There’s this moment — half-dream, half-thought — where I catch a fragment of something in the corner of my mind. I turn toward it. I chase it. And if I’m lucky, I chase it long enough for it to turn around and catch me.
That chase is what charges me. Stumbling through the dark, following breadcrumbs left by a story that doesn’t want to be found—not yet. The clues never come in order. They show up like scattered pieces of a massive jigsaw puzzle, except there’s no picture on the box. The image only reveals itself as you fit the pieces together. And even then, sometimes you’re wrong. Fooled. Thrown off.
And honestly? That’s when things get sexy. That’s when the story pushes back, when it fights you a little, when it demands more.
But we must be honest — to get the real stories, the good ones, you’ve got to look into the abyss. That’s where they live—just sitting there, waiting, watching, and daring you to prove you’ve got the patience, the grit, the nerve to piece them together.
You have to be careful, though. When you’re deep in it — in the thick of the story — you can lose everything. It can vanish like a wraith. One second, it’s there, close enough to feel, just long enough to let you know it could be something. The next, it’s gone. Because maybe you weren’t ready. Maybe the story saw through you. Weighed you. Measured you. Found you wanting.
Doubt stands at the edge of the Shadow, glaring with that slight, sinister grin — the kind that chills you deeper than you care to admit. You start to hear the whispers oozing from its lips. At first, you ignore them. But slowly, they start to take hold. You feel them crawl under your skin, digging their nails in. Their shrieks serenade your soul.
You have to resist. You have to defend the faith — in yourself, in the work, in the chase. Sometimes that’s all a writer has. Belief and maybe a little luck. If your courage holds.
So you scream back: “GET THE FUCK OFF ME!”
Then you breathe. Settle. Take the next step on the path.
I sit down in front of my laptop. Coffee on one side. A smoke. Guppy curled up by my feet. I take a deep breath.
A suburban saga of secrets, sequins, and sabotage.
Episode 1:
The Mayor, the Kimono, and Capote’s Forbidden Love
The text the mayor received simply read, “I know what you buried, and it wasn’t just a time capsule.” He dropped his spoon into his cereal with a neutral thunk and slowly looked toward the back garden, where the freshly disturbed earth sat like a guilty secret under a patchy rhododendron. He took a deep breath and tugged at the collar of his robe—not the pink kimono, no, that one was currently six feet under with a copy of Mamma Mia! Live at the Greek in a glittery DVD case.
He clutched his phone with one hand and his cereal tube with the other. The mayor didn’t own bowls. Too vulnerable. Too open. Like a confession with handles.
Across the hedges, Myrtle McKlusky—seventy-nine, semi-retired, fully judgmental—was watching him from her sunroom. She sat in her recliner like a falcon in a floral nightgown, sipping from a pint glass of prune juice and fanning her three Chinese Crested dogs, each trembling with a different neurosis.
The largest, Capote, was vibrating like an old blender. He had recently discovered his feelings for Misty, Myrtle’s black Chow, and now stared out the window with the unrelenting passion of a Tennessee Williams heroine.
Capote had needs.
The mayor knew Myrtle had seen him. She always did. She had binoculars shaped like opera glasses and judgment shaped like artillery. He had tried to be discreet, but it’s hard to bury shame quietly when you’re panting in crocs and elbow-deep in mulch.
The kimono was silk. It had a peacock on the back. A punt of brandy had been involved.
And now someone was taunting him.
He stormed out of his house in cargo shorts and a tank top that said “Hot Dogs Over Handguns,” and made a beeline for Myrtle’s porch. She met him at the screen door, holding her smallest dog, Pontius—Pont for short—who barked like he was doing Shakespeare.
“Spying again, Myrtle?” the mayor growled, wiping sweat from his forehead and trying not to pant.
Myrtle narrowed her eyes behind rhinestone bifocals. “I would hardly call ‘having working eyes’ a crime.”
“That text wasn’t funny.”
“I didn’t say it was,” she said coolly. “Capote typed it. He’s quite dexterous. Especially since he caught your Misty presenting.”
The mayor’s eyes widened. “That’s my dog.”
“And that’s my Capote,” Myrtle said, lifting him proudly like a neurotic Simba. “And he’s in love.”
“She’s fixed.”
“So is he. Love finds a way.”
The mayor clenched his fists. “Call off your pervert dog or I swear, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Myrtle leaned forward, dangerous now. “Threaten three hairless angels with names from the Harlem Renaissance? Do it, Mayor. The HOA already wants your head after that incident with the inflatable disco duck.”
He froze.
She smiled.
“You wore the kimono to Dancing with Myself, didn’t you?”
Silence.
“And you did the full choreography. With backup. Solo.”
He turned and stormed away, sweat rolling down his temple, heart pounding, ears pent up with the ghost of Billy Idol.
Capote licked the glass longingly as Misty rolled in a pile of mulch. Somewhere, a wind blew through the garden. Somewhere, a love story had just begun.
And under the rhododendron, a peacock shimmered in the dirt, waiting.
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
For me, it really boils down to three things: peace of mind, integrity, and humility.
Peace of mind isn’t just a cute idea you chase after you’ve ticked off the career boxes and bought the right brand of meditation app. It’s the whole point. It’s being able to sit alone-no noise, no phone, no endless doomscrolling — and not feel like your own brain is trying to mug you. Without peace, all the money, likes, and shiny milestones mean exactly squat.
Integrity — the forgotten art of not being a sellout. Not the performative kind either. I’m talking about the real-deal, do-the-right-thing-even-when-it-sucks integrity. It’s what you do when no one is throwing you a parade or handing you a blue checkmark for it. It’s not glamorous, but it’s what keeps you from waking up one morning wondering how you turned into exactly the kind of person you used to roll your eyes at.
Humility — the secret sauce that keeps peace and integrity from congealing into self-righteous nonsense. Humility isn’t about shrinking yourself or apologizing for existing. It’s about remembering that no matter how many gold stars you’ve earned, you’re still a deeply flawed work-in-progress. You’re not the sun — the world doesn’t revolve around you.
And this leads into something a lot of people miss: Yes, living a good life is about not surrendering — not selling your soul at clearance prices. However, it’s also about recognizing that not everything revolves around you and your needs. Crazy, right? We tend to think our opinions, our feelings, our “truth” are the centerpiece of existence. And sure, it’s great to find like-minded people who “get” you, who nod when you talk and make you feel validated. But here’s the kicker: real growth often comes when someone challenges you, when they offer a perspective you hadn’t even considered because you were too busy broadcasting your own.
That’s why it’s imperative — life-or-death for your soul — to keep an open mind without compromising your integrity. It’s a balancing act, no doubt. But nothing in life is purely black and white, no matter how much we’d love for it to be. Life is lived in the messy, uncomfortable gray zones where two things can be true at once — where right and wrong aren’t always neon signs but flickering streetlights.
Why is it so hard to live by these values today?
Because society basically runs on encouraging the opposite.
We sit around and moan about how broken everything is — how shallow, how divided, how exhausting. And, sure, the system’s cracked. But let’s not kid ourselves — these aren’t new problems. We’ve been fighting the same internal battles — pride, impatience, ego — since we were toddlers throwing tantrums over the wrong color sippy cup.
What’s changed? The chaos is just faster now, noisier, harder to tune out. Peace of mind? Good luck finding it when your entire life is competing with ads, outrage, and hot takes. Integrity? Tough sell when the world loves a good shortcut and sells out faster than concert tickets. Humility? Ha — humility doesn’t trend well. Loud wins. Big wins. Modesty doesn’t even get a participation trophy.
And let’s be real: the stuff we’re so furious at “out there” is often just a slightly uglier reflection of what’s going on inside of us. The same insecurities, anger, and fear. Society didn’t invent these flaws — it just put them in a sparkly package and added a 24/7 subscription model.
So you have to stay close to yourself. Not the Instagram-ready highlight reel, but the actual human being — the one who’s weathered real triumphs and real faceplants. The one who’s fought for peace of mind, integrity, and humility the hard way. These aren’t luxury accessories — they’re battle armor. They’re what protect you when the world, very efficiently and very loudly, tries to drag you into its circus.
At the end of the day, nearly everything you think you own — the job, the house, the accolades, the opinions of others — is rented. Temporary. The only thing you actually own is whether you stayed true to who you are — whether you fought the quiet, ugly battles that no one clapped for.
Living a good life these days isn’t about winning. It’s not about being the loudest, or the richest, or the most-liked. It’s about holding the line. It’s about not surrendering — but also about keeping your mind open without folding your integrity into a paper airplane every time someone disagrees with you.
And no — this isn’t some “Live, Laugh, Love” nonsense I ripped off a cool poster or skimmed in a self-help book. This comes from a lifetime of getting it wrong — repeatedly. Only to finally, stubbornly, start figuring out what actually matters and what doesn’t.
Here’s the rub: I still screw it up on the regular. I’m not handing you a blueprint — I’m handing you a work-in-progress. But the difference is, now I know it when I mess up. And I keep working at maintaining the few things I know are worth the fight: peace, integrity, humility.
If mistakes were to be made, I’ve made them. Lessons to be learned? I’ve learned them — well, some of them. The most important thing is, I haven’t been afraid to live.
If I can do it, you can too.
Because at the end of the day, the likes fade, the trophies collect dust, and the noise dies down. All you’re left with is yourself — hope you made good company. Otherwise, it’s gonna be a long, awkward ride to the end.
You get older and realize you didn’t know a damn thing.
When I was young, fear was the one thing I wasn’t allowed to show. Not in my house, not in the Army, and sure as hell not in front of my family. Fear was the enemy. It was a weakness. It was that voice in your head you learned to silence—or at least pretend you couldn’t hear.
In the Army, fear was treated like a virus. You didn’t talk about it; you didn’t acknowledge it. You locked it down, put on your war face, and moved forward. To hesitate was to risk everything—your mission, your men, your skin. So you learned to shove it deep down somewhere you didn’t have to feel it.
However, the amusing thing is that, while in battle, I realized fear was my friend; it kept me alert. But we didn’t call it fear. We called it vigilance. We used phrases like “Stay Alert, Stay Alive” or the popular one, “Head on a Swivel.” No matter the catchphrase, we learned to understand that fear was a part of the job. But we never said that aloud.
In so many ways, fear gets a bad reputation. It’s been a part of us since the beginning. We need to understand how to use it, just as we do with anything else in life. Fear doesn’t forget. You can pack it away and bury it under years of deployments, promotions, and medals, but it never really goes away. It waits. Patiently.
Fear didn’t vanish when I left the battlefield; it simply found new arenas. When I became a husband and later a father, I thought maybe fear would find a new home somewhere far away from me. After all, what’s scarier—enemy fire or a newborn that won’t sleep for three days? Turns out, fear adapts. It’s just as present when you’re staring at hospital monitors as it is when you’re huddled in a foreign desert waiting for the next move.
All the darkness I’d seen in the world—the villages reduced to rubble, the faces of men who wouldn’t make it home—I wanted to protect my family from it. Shield them from the kind of pain that doesn’t heal, the kind that sticks to your bones. I knew I couldn’t stop the world from being what it is, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to roll over. There’s nothing worse than feeling helpless when the world decides to teach your child a lesson. You want them to grab the world by the horns and kick its ass. When they do something courageous, we applaud them, exhaling because we know it could have gone another way. But you have to trust that the things you taught them will catch hold. They often surprise you because they have been listening all along. And let me tell you, they didn’t make it easy.
Fear stayed with me even as they grew. I swear it’s their job to scare the shit out of you, and they seem to take that job pretty seriously. Like the time, my son decided to jump out of perfectly good airplanes because he “wanted to be all he could be.” I considered banning television in the house. Or when my daughter drove cross-country in a beat-up car with a prayer and a gas card. Every bold move they made had me aging in dog years, and I have the gray hairs to prove it, but damned if I wasn’t proud.
I spent decades pretending I had it all under control. I kept fear on a short leash, convinced that ignoring it was the same thing as mastering it. But no matter how many battles I fought, how many bills I paid, or how many “Dad of the Year” moments I racked up, fear was always there, waiting for a crack in the armor.
It wasn’t until I retired—hung up the uniform, no more missions, no more late-night phone calls, just silence and the old ghosts I’d tried to outrun—that I finally sat still long enough to hear it clearly. Fear wasn’t the enemy. It never was. It was the warning system, the gut check, the part of me that said, “Hey, maybe charging headfirst isn’t always the best plan.”
These days, I no longer fight fear. I listen to it. I don’t let it steer—I’ve still got too much pride for that—but I let it ride along. We’ve made peace, old fear, and I.
Funny thing is, now that I’ve stopped pretending I’m not scared, I’ve never felt braver. Fear, that old companion who kept me vigilant on battlefields and restless nights, still rides with me. Only now, we’re on better terms—I trust it to keep me sharp, and it trusts me to keep moving forward, one step smarter than the man I used to be.
I’m good at solving problems—the real ones. The messy, inconvenient, “everything’s-on-fire” kind that show up at 2 a.m. I was that guy—the one you call when it’s all falling apart. And by sunrise, I’d be walking away with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other like nothing happened. Crisis averted. No medals. No meltdown. Just fixed.
Fixing things became my identity. Not in some poetic, savior-complex kind of way—but because someone had to do it. Appliances, busted cars, computers, money problems, broken plans—you name it. I’d lock in and work it until it bent or broke for good. Most people panic in chaos. I get focused.
So naturally, when I asked my family what I’m good at—for a course assignment—they stared at me like I’d just asked them to name all my past lives. Eventually, a few mumbled agreements trickled in. But when it came time to list my flaws? Oh, that list rolled off their tongues like they’d been practicing for a roast. That’s when it hit me—people don’t always see the person holding the whole thing together. They just assume the mess disappears on its own.
And still, amid all that, my stepmom—the queen of unsolicited truth bombs—drops this: “Honey, you can’t fix everything.” I laughed, of course. That’s what people say when they’ve given up too soon, right? When they haven’t stepped back, taken a breath, and tried again from another angle.
But with time, her words started to stick. Not because she was right about everything, but because I started to see the limits of even my best efforts. I realized that every problem has a solution, but I wasn’t the solution to every problem. That stung, but it also freed me. I didn’t have to carry every broken thing. I didn’t have to make everything work.
Still, if there’s a problem with a fix in it, I’ll find it. That’s what I do. I bring logic into chaos, patience into panic, and if the solution exists, I’ll get there. But now I know when to fix, when to walk away, and when to just be present in the wreckage with someone else.
So yeah. What am I good at? I’m good at being the one who shows up when it matters. The calm in the storm. The fixer with a sense of humor and a pretty solid track record. And just enough wisdom now to know when I’m not the answer—and to be okay with that.
My stepmom has been a pain in my ass for over forty years. Don’t judge me — the feeling’s mutual, and we both know it. That’s just how we operate. Call it our version of a love language: blunt, sarcastic, no sugarcoating.
When I was younger, I used to wonder what my dad saw in her. Later, after spending enough time dealing with him, I started wondering how she managed to put up with him. She’s one of the toughest women I’ve ever met — sharp-tongued, unfiltered, impossible to rattle.
And if I’m being honest, she’s guided me through some very rough situations over the years. I’ve learned to appreciate her wisdom — the kind that comes from experience, not books. I’m grateful she cares enough to speak up, to give input even when I act like I don’t want it. But she’ll never hear me say that. It’s not what we do.
Her birthday’s coming up, and I plan to surprise her. We’ll end up having one of our signature conversations — no niceties, just raw honesty and sideways affection. My older brother will give me that look he always does, like Can you two not do this right now? And I’ll fire back with my classic Don’t make me punch you glare. He knows better.
What blows my mind is that she’s pushing ninety. Ninety. She’s lived through things I’ve only read about in history books or faked authority on in college essays. And yet she’s still sharp, still fierce, still calling it like she sees it.
That’s her. That’s us. Messy, loud, brutally real — and somehow, it works.
She wore the veil not to disappear, but to survive.
It wasn’t for tradition, or rebellion. It wasn’t a performance. It was protection. It was her way of saying: I decide what you get to take from me.
They never handed her chains. They handed her mirrors. Bent ones. Peer pressure didn’t demand. It seduced. Do what we do. Be what we expect. Not because we said so—but because you’ll be alone if you don’t.
Then secular pressure followed, wrapped in freedom’s clothing. Be who you are—as long as it’s curated, as long as it looks good, as long as it doesn’t disturb. Express, but don’t confront. Create, but don’t challenge. Believe in nothing but your brand.
And for a while, she drifted. Trying to belong. Trying to disappear inside approval.
But inside the silence, something broke open.
“Weak as I am…”
She said it like an admission. But it was the beginning of truth.
Weak—not because she failed, but because she felt. Because she hadn’t let the world harden her into something hollow. Because even in survival, she still longed for something more than existing.
Because she can’t change the world, but she control how it molds her. And she refused to be shaped by fear. She chose to be shaped by memory. By presence. By scars she didn’t hide.
Stay alive. Keep on fighting.
Some days, she did. Some days, she didn’t.
Like a fugitive on the run—from becoming unrecognizable to herself. Carrying the weight of all she’s done—and all that’s been done to her. She was born from regret, yes. But that regret made her conscious. Aware. Awake.
And still, the questions haunt her:
What is she fighting for? What is she running from?
The answers shift, day to day.
Sometimes she fights for the quiet. For the small version of herself she abandoned to survive. For the right to not have to explain. For the chance to feel something other than fear.
And yes—there are moments. Moments where escape feels like mercy.
What if she wanted to run? Leave it all. What if she crumbled, and couldn’t fight anymore?
These thoughts don’t scare her anymore. They keep her honest. They remind her that strength isn’t the absence of breaking— it’s the choice to return to yourself after.
Because at the end of all the noise, all the pretending, all the shrinking and reaching and rebuilding—
She is left with one quiet, unshakable truth:
This is who I really am.
No polish. No filter. Veiled, but not invisible. Wounded, but not erased. Tired, but still reaching.
So when the world looks her way, squinting through its own discomfort, trying to place her in a category, or strip her down to something simpler, something safer—
She doesn’t flinch.
She lifts her gaze and speaks with a voice that carries every weight she never dropped:
“With this tainted soul, in this wicked world… Am I too strong for you?”
And if the answer is yes—so be it.
She never asked for permission. She only asked to be real.
Everyone makes sacrifices. That’s just part of being an adult—along with bills, back pain, and pretending to understand how taxes work. But some sacrifices don’t get enough credit. They’re quiet, constant, and totally underappreciated. Let’s start with parents.
Parents: The Masters of Silent Sacrifice
Sure, everyone knows parenting is hard. But it’s not just about surviving diaper blowouts or sitting through 300 replays of Frozen. It’s about the real, behind-the-scenes sacrifices. Like the mom who takes a job she doesn’t love just because it comes with decent health insurance. Or the dad who eats the last two bites of crusty mac and cheese instead of cooking himself dinner—again.
Parents give up more than time and money. They give up peace and privacy. They trade dreams for dental plans. And let’s not forget sleep. You could power a small city on the energy parents lose just trying to get a toddler to bed. It’s not glamorous. No one hands out medals for making it through a meltdown in Target. But these sacrifices shape lives. Quietly. Powerfully.
First Responders: Showing Up When It Counts
Then there are first responders—firefighters, EMTs, police officers—the folks who run toward danger while the rest of us are Googling “how to escape a burning building.” These people give up a lot too.
They miss holidays, birthdays, sleep… you know, all the fun stuff. And what do they get in return? Stress, trauma, and the joy of paperwork. Lots of paperwork. Plus, they carry memories most of us couldn’t handle—gritty, painful, unforgettable moments that stay long after the sirens stop.
And yet, they keep showing up. Not for glory. Not for a gold star. Just because someone has to—and they’ve decided it’ll be them.
The Sacrifices We Don’t See—But Should
Here’s the thing: whether it’s a parent sacrificing their sanity during a four-hour kindergarten play, or a paramedic showing up at 3 a.m. because someone else’s world just fell apart—these acts deserve more than a passing “thanks.” They deserve to be seen. Respected. Remembered.
Because at the end of the day, sacrifice isn’t always some big, dramatic gesture. Most of the time, it’s a thousand small decisions made out of love, duty, or just sheer stubborn commitment to doing what’s right.
What does freedom even mean? It’s like one of those made-up words everyone thinks they understand, but no one actually does. We toss it around in debates, slap it on bumper stickers, or turn it into a hashtag. Then we try to sound deep by asking, “In what sense do you mean — philosophical, political, personal?” But let’s be honest: most of that is just smoke to dodge the real answer. Which is, simply: I don’t have a clue.
We often treat freedom like a buzzword—something we claim, defend, hashtag, or stick on the back of a truck. It’s sold as autonomy, choice, and the sacred right to do whatever we want whenever we want. But real freedom? It’s not that flashy. It’s quieter, more internal, often inconvenient, and much harder to define. You don’t notice it on a billboard, and it won’t trend for long. It might even be harder to see, because it begins not with what we do, but with how we perceive—how we see ourselves, others, and what we think life owes us.
Across spiritual traditions—Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam—a pattern emerges: we are not free by default. We’re born into inherited scripts, societal myths, and a mess of cravings, fears, and projections. Most of our lives are spent reacting to things we don’t even understand. It’s like trying to win a board game where the rules are vague, the instructions are missing, and someone keeps changing the goalposts when you’re not looking. No wonder we’re tired.
Freedom, in the deeper sense, isn’t about getting our way. It’s about seeing clearly enough that we’re no longer at the mercy of every craving, trigger, or existential itch. In Buddhism, this means recognizing dukkha (suffering) and its cause, tanhā (craving). Sufism centers on taming the nafs — the unrestrained, insatiable ego. Taoism discusses abandoning the exhausting need to force outcomes and instead moving with the current.
Christianity points us to the idea that freedom comes not through control but through the purification of the heart. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Not “they shall win,” not “they shall be promoted,” but see. It’s not exactly the promise of a six-figure salary, but it might be worth more. Judaism and Islam also make it clear that freedom is not about breaking the rules, but living in alignment with something truer and eternal. In other words, you’re not the center of the universe — and that might be the best news you’ll hear all day.
This challenges our cultural obsession with control. As Ishmael shows us, modern civilization has wrapped freedom in the myth of domination. We think freedom means being the boss—of nature, of time, of each other. But domination isn’t freedom. It’s just anxiety in a power suit. The more we try to force the world to match our expectations, the more we suffer when it doesn’t.
And yet, even when we “get it,” the work is anything but linear. Sometimes, the path to freedom involves breaking down. Not the tidy kind of unraveling you read about in memoirs, but the ugly, confusing, no-GPS type of collapse. And oddly enough, that might be necessary. Because falling apart can strip away what was never really you. It can expose what’s underneath the performance, the control, the coping. You meditate one morning and snap at someone by lunch. You let go of a toxic habit, then dream about it for a week.
That’s because fundamental transformation creates cognitive dissonance—the friction between the polished self we’ve been taught to perform and the inconvenient truths trying to surface, like realizing that your definition of success might be making you miserable, or that the life you built isn’t the one you actually want. The system shakes when what we’ve believed can no longer hold up to what we’re beginning to feel. It’s disorienting. But that disorientation is a gift. It’s how the mind makes space for something more honest.
That’s not regression. It’s evidence you’re alive and paying attention — maybe even transforming.
Absolute freedom isn’t being untouchable. It’s being touchable without falling apart. It’s having enough self-awareness to recognize when you’re being hijacked by old stories, and enough stillness to pause before you reenact them. Learning to laugh at your own nonsense is key before it convinces you it’s the voice of God. You don’t destroy the ego; you learn not to take it so seriously.
And here’s the kicker: understanding isn’t the end of the journey—it is the journey. Freedom begins the moment you start to see differently: when the illusion cracks just enough to let in the light, or, just as often, when the darkness teaches you to feel your way through. The dark isn’t the enemy; it’s where the roots grow, where silence speaks, where real seeing begins. Understanding doesn’t guarantee peace but gets you in the room with it. And that, on most days, is freedom enough.
Perhaps today marks the opening of a much deeper conversation—scary, uncomfortable, and sometimes downright mean. A conversation that shakes the foundation of who we think we are, or who we’ve been told to be. It may challenge the ideals we’ve long held sacred. My question is this:
Do we need that kind of disruption to be free?
I know I do. Yeah, I’m scared. I’m frustrated. I’m pissed off. But I also know it’s necessary—because this discomfort is where I grow into the man I actually want to be.
The sunlight fades. Darkness returns. I wait in the hush, breath held, heart steady. The Keepers stand ahead, already assembled—silent, still, and watchful. In their presence, I feel both small and eternal. Beneath my calm, something stirs—my soul, long quiet, surges suddenly. It’s not noise, not fear. It is truth moving through me like a forgotten rhythm remembered. A tremor rises from the deepest part of who I am, and with it comes a whisper: the light… the call… the quill. These were never external things. They lived within me all along. I had only forgotten how to listen.
In the distance, the sky bends to the horizon’s will. Waves of green light ripple across the dusk like an ancient truth brushing its fingers across the world. The field before me sparkles with dew, each blade of grass a tiny shard of clarity, reflecting the last breath of sunlight. This moment—caught between day and night, between silence and speech—feels sacred. My steed shifts beneath me, sensing the tension in my thoughts. He is anxious, ready. And maybe I am too. But readiness doesn’t feel like confidence. It feels like surrender. I tighten the reins—not to control, but to remind myself that I am here, that I have chosen this.
We ride—not toward victory, but toward purpose. Toward the gathering. Toward those who understand this strange calling to bear words like burdens, and gifts. We are not warriors. We are vessels. We carry stories that are older than we are, stories that ask to be told again, each time a little more fully. We move as one toward the collective, not to be absorbed, but to belong.
Now, surrounded by my brethren, I feel the resonance. Not noise. Harmony. Thousands of voices—not the same but aligned. My own words rise from that shared current, not louder, but clearer. I speak the truth I have wrestled with in the quiet corners of my mind.
Some call the rawness madness. They dismiss it as noise, as rambling. But those of us who live in this tension—we know better. We know that sometimes, madness is just meaning in disguise. That chaos, when held in the right hands, becomes clarity. To those who face the block, I say this: it is not your enemy. It is your mirror.
The block is doubt. Yes. But not the kind that breaks us. It is the kind that slows us down, that makes us ask why before we speak. It is the force that prevents arrogance, that checks ego. Doubt humbles us. It forces us to listen harder, to question deeper, to speak with care. It reminds us that this craft is not about being heard—it is about being understood.
And it is in that pause, that searching, where we grow. The block is not a wall. It is a threshold. When we understand that, it no longer stops us—it transforms us. That understanding, that acceptance, is how the block is shattered.
Funkadelic’s Maggot Brain isn’t just a record — it’s a reckoning. Released in 1971, it captured the psychic temperature of a country unraveling. War abroad, decay at home, distrust in the air, and the so-called counterculture burning out in real time. Maggot Brain took all that noise, that grief, that disillusionment — and turned it into one of the most brutally honest LPs ever pressed.
It wasn’t neat. It wasn’t safe. It was spiritual, political, cynical, funky as hell, and deeply weird — like a sermon preached from the edge of a nervous breakdown.
Maggot Brain captured the attitude of the entire country within a single LP. There was literally a track that spoke for everyone. If you were angry, it had you. If you were confused, it held you. If you just wanted to dance your way through the end times, Funkadelic had you covered. Every track hit a different nerve, and none of them asked permission.
There are songs that groove hard (You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks), others that mock the stupidity of it all (Super Stupid), and ones that crack open a deeper existential dread (Wars of Armageddon). But all of it orbits the title track. Maggot Brain isn’t just the opener. It’s the altar. It’s the cry at the center of the storm.
Eddie Hazel doesn’t play Maggot Brain. He doesn’t even perform it in the traditional sense. He haunts it. Possesses it. Bleeds into it. And once it begins, you don’t get to be a casual listener anymore. You’re drafted. No warning. No warm-up. Just a single, ghost-drenched guitar note that slides into your chest like a whisper you weren’t supposed to hear.
It’s not loud. It’s not fast. It just is. And that’s more terrifying than any distortion pedal at full blast. Hazel creeps in like a rogue spirit — smooth, silent, uninvited — and by the time you realize what’s happening, you’re already in it, stripped of cool and composure, emotionally pantsed.
You don’t get a beat to grab onto. No vocals to decode. Just a guitar screaming in slow motion. It’s like standing in the middle of a storm you can’t see but definitely feel. The grief is palpable. The rage is buried just deep enough to make you nervous. And right when you think you’ve got it figured out, the damn thing shifts and you’re spiraling again. Welcome to Maggot Brain — cognitive dissonance with a six-string.
Because let’s be real: this song shouldn’t work. It’s ten minutes, mostly one instrument. No verse. No chorus. Not even a satisfying drop. But for ten minutes, Eddie Hazel demolishes every “rule” about what music is supposed to be, and you love him for it. Or maybe you hate him for making you love it. Either way, you’re in it.
And no, you don’t walk away saying, “cool solo, bro.” You walk away dazed, like you just remembered a dream you never had. Or like your soul got mugged, politely. This is the kind of music that picks a fight with your expectations and then hugs you while you cry.
I still remember the first time I heard it — in a smoke-filled room full of strangers pretending not to be high. No one talked. No one moved. We were all just… held. Not by the music, exactly, but by whatever was trying to speak through it. We didn’t share a moment. We survived one. And we were better for it, or at least quieter.
Hazel doesn’t “solo.” He confesses, and we are his priests. Every bend, every scream from those strings is a sin laid bare. And by the end of the song, we have no choice but to grant absolution. Not because we’re qualified, but because he earned it. Because whatever he was holding, he handed it to us. And in some strange, sacred transaction, we took it.
His playing doesn’t follow any tidy roadmap. It stumbles through grief and grace, melting down and pulling itself back together like a nervous breakdown that found religion. There are moments where you think he’s going to lose it entirely — and maybe he does. But somehow, that’s the point.
You want to make sense of it, but your brain is two steps behind the whole time. Because it’s pretty and ugly. Gentle and violent. Hopeful and hopeless. Your heart’s trying to lean in while your head’s going, “Are we okay??” That’s the dissonance. That’s the magic. That’s why it hits harder than any perfect pop chorus ever could.
And George Clinton, cosmic genius and probable chaos wizard, gave Hazel just one instruction: “Play like your mother just died.” Which is both tragic and kind of a dick move, but clearly — it worked. What came out wasn’t a song. It was a slow, spiritual detonation. Hazel didn’t perform grief — he offered it. Raw. Untuned. Unfiltered. The kind of thing most of us spend our lives trying not to feel.
The track never resolves. No big finale. No grand crescendo. Just a long fade into silence, like a memory slipping back under the surface. It’s not done with you — it’s just gone. Until the next time you’re reckless enough to press play.
And I wonder: for those ten minutes, did Eddie Hazel serve as a guide to enlightenment? Not the neat, monk-on-a-mountain kind. The messier kind. The gut-punch kind. The kind that grabs you by the heart, shakes something loose, and leaves without saying a word.
The morning began like it had countless times before—but today, it felt different. There was a stillness that lingered just a second longer. A hush in the air that made you listen more closely. The slow fade from darkness to grey had its own rhythm, its own muted pulse. It was that fragile aspect of dawn—neither night nor day—when everything feels suspended, as if the world is holding its breath.
You hear the familiar rush of cars below, life going about its business, unaware of the quiet reverence unfolding above. You step onto the terrace not out of habit, but out of something harder to name. A need, maybe. Or a yearning to be part of something unspoken. You don’t search for a view. You let your gaze fall into the sky, into nothing. Into everything.
Then the sound begins. The piano. Tentative at first, like a thought forming. Fingers move over ivory and black, finding phrases that don’t need words. The melody doesn’t push—it drifts. You close your eyes, and it takes you somewhere. Or perhaps it helps you retrieve something lost in the static of everyday: a gentleness, a memory, a forgotten truth.
You lift your bow, not to perform, but to respond. To join. Your hands move, not with effort but with instinct, the strings vibrating beneath your fingers like a second heartbeat. There’s no audience, no need. Just the sound, the sky, and you.
Then you see her.
She’s there, just below, wrapped in morning light, coffee in hand, eyes somewhere far away. She doesn’t notice you yet. She doesn’t have to. She’s inside the moment too. Something about her stillness makes the entire world feel composed. As if her quiet presence is the final note that makes the music whole.
You watch her for a beat, caught in the beauty of her being, the unforced motion of her simply existing. The way she breathes. The way the steam rises from her cup. How the breeze toys with the loose strand of her hair. It’s ordinary, yet nothing could be more profound.
And in that moment, I understood what beauty and love was— and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with sex.
You play on. And she listens—without effort, without expectation. Just as you play—without reason, without resistance. The world outside blurs. Time bends. You’re no longer trying to capture the moment. You’re inside it. You are it.
But I’m silent, really— no sound, no voice, just a mouth stretched wide around something too big to name. My eyes glaze—not with calm, but with shock. A thin film of disbelief over everything. My heart races. I’m wrecked like a tsunami with no quarter, flung breathless against the shore.
It’s not quiet. Not truly. It’s a silence that throbs, that undressesme, strips me down to the rawest nerve.
Why? Am I afraid to speak what I feel? I push it down until I crack. Swallow the pain, the misery, the grief— like that’s what strength is. As if silence means control.
But inside, it never stops screaming.
I’ve built a prison with no walls. I’m both prisoner and warden. Every emotion I swallow—another brick. My tears, the mortar. The longer I hold on, the harder the mortar sets.
Letting go should be simple. But I can’t. I won’t. I have to be strong. Another brick.
The chains tear into me. I pull and pull, begging for clemency I know isn’t coming. Skin breaks. Something deeper frays. Still I pull. Still I scream. Another brick. How did I get here?
I slump into the abyss of agony. Its waves strangely soft, almost soothing. The ghosts of my past wrap around me, pulling me under.
Is this peace? Is this what I deserve?
No.
I scream NOOOOO!!! A final act of defiance. A rupture in the silence. A crack in the wall.
I scream again—louder. Louder than the pain. Louder than the ghosts. Louder than everything that told me to stay quiet.
The final word is no longer a whisper. The silence and I become one. And we finally—
The light crept in, not with purpose, but inevitability. It pooled over the floorboards in pale streaks, slipped across the rumpled sheets, and found her where she sat—curled in on herself at the edge of the bed like something unfinished. The curtain shifted with a lazy sigh, stirred by the hum of a world already moving without her.
She didn’t move. Just blinked slowly, eyes still heavy. Her hair was a mess—coiled and wild, clinging to the nape of her neck with sweat. The air felt thick, damp from last night’s rain, and carried a faint trace of coffee drifting in from the apartment next door. It reminded her she wasn’t entirely alone in the world—just sealed off from it.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand. She didn’t look. She already knew the message: “You okay? You were pretty quiet last night.”
She had gone to that rooftop gathering. Smiled on cue. Nodded politely as someone explained a startup idea for the third time. But when the conversation shifted to politics, to “people being too sensitive,” to jokes with teeth she wasn’t supposed to flinch at—she had gone quiet. Not out of agreement. Out of calculation.
It wasn’t fear of confrontation. It was exhaustion.
The kind that seeps into your bones when you’ve spent years editing yourself in real time.
Why can’t you just be easier?
The voice came sharp, cutting through the fog. Familiar. Not hers exactly—but forged in her. It spoke in the tone of her third-grade teacher, the one who called her “bossy” for speaking with certainty. The one who wrote on her report card, “bright, but disruptive.” That was the first time she learned that being loud and being wrong were seen as the same thing.
She had been shrinking ever since. A slow erosion.
And now, this morning, she felt caught between the shrinking and the wanting—wanting to take up space and fearing the cost of it.
You think you’re different? That the rules don’t apply to you?
She flexed her jaw, let the thought sit. The worst part of that voice was how reasonable it sounded. How it wrapped itself in concern. In survival.
Outside the window, a billboard stood tall above the bus stop: a model in spotless white jeans and a tagline in all caps—LIVE YOUR TRUTH™. She almost laughed. As if truth came clean and neatly styled.
Her own truth felt messy. Unmarketable. Like morning breath and ragged nails and questions without answers.
She looked at her hands—real, rough, hers. Last night she had come home and typed a long apology to the group chat. “Sorry I was off. Just tired. Hope I didn’t kill the vibe.”
She hovered over the send button.
Then she didn’t.
Now, she picked up the phone, screen still glowing with the unsent draft. She tapped and held. Delete.
It wasn’t a revolution. Just refusal.
A small, quiet defiance.
She wasn’t whole. There were still bruises beneath her calm, still doubts threading her thoughts. But she was done apologizing for needing more than performance.
The light had shifted again, stronger now. Not demanding. Just there.
She wasn’t sure what came next.
But this—this stillness, this pause, this decision not to disappear—was a start.
Mind, body, and spirit—it’s not just a slogan on a t-shirt or a phrase tossed around in self-help books. It’s a lived, gritty process. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. It doesn’t always feel peaceful. It asks to be practiced daily, especially in the moments when we’re coming apart.
When my wife was dying, I was unraveling. There was no calm breath, no quiet meditation that could hold me. The pain was too loud, too sharp. I couldn’t go to the dojo—I knew I might hurt someone. So I turned to the only thing left that didn’t require restraint: writing.
That’s where Memoirs of Madness was born—not from ambition, but necessity. I wrote because if I didn’t, I was going to explode. Writing became my release valve. My attempt to find balance in a world that no longer made sense. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t composed. But it was honest. It was survival.
Healing doesn’t always look like light. Sometimes it’s just sitting with the darkness long enough to stop being afraid of it. Writing gave me a place to do that. Not to escape pain, but to face it with something steady under my hands—a pen, a page, a place to speak freely.
People like to talk about acceptance, about “new normals,” especially when you’re going through something irreversible. I’ve been told I may never return to the person I was before. And maybe that’s true. But I also know it’s not the whole truth. I know there’s more to me than what’s been broken.
Throughout my life, I’ve encountered teachings I didn’t ask for. Moments of awe, loss, surrender, and grace. I didn’t always understand why they came, but something in me knew not to reject them. Writing became the way I made sense of them. The way I honored them.
It’s not therapy, exactly. It’s more like a mirror. Each word reflects something back at me—something raw, something I need to see. Writing doesn’t heal like medicine. It heals like movement. Like breath after being underwater too long.
Writers tell the truths we were taught to keep quiet. We witness the small miracles—flowers bending to the breeze, the call of a bird we can’t see, the still gaze of an animal watching us. We notice the laughter of children that vibrates with something pure and untouchable. We let it all into our bones. But writing is how we let it back out. How we stay connected—not digitally, but spiritually, viscerally.
Every sentence I write is a thread that connects me to the person I’ve always been beneath the layers of grief, anger, and expectation. Not the old self. Not the broken self. But the essential one. The one that endures.
I once asked: Who’s smarter—the adult or the infant? Predictably, everyone said the adult. When I pressed them, they said the child doesn’t know anything. But I disagreed. I said the infant. They laughed, of course. All but one. That one asked me, “Why?”
“Because the infant sees everything,” I said. “They feel everything. They haven’t learned to numb themselves yet. They haven’t picked up the habit of pretending. They are unfiltered truth.”
That’s what writing brings me back to. That clarity. That honesty. That wholeness before the world taught us to break ourselves into pieces.
Healing through writing isn’t a return to what was. It’s a return to what’s real. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.
Author’s Note:
I sat looking at the challenge image, thinking about the beauty of that moment frozen in time. I found myself wondering how to capture something like that in words. Lately, I’ve been studying Buddhism—not because I want to become a Buddhist, but because I’m wise enough to know that truth can’t be found with a closed mind.
Next thing I knew, this piece came through me.
It’s not all I have to say on the subject, but it’s a beginning.
“Do as I say, not as I do,” the classic parental phrase, never touched my mother’s lips. However, “Because I said so,” not only repeated — it seemed like it should be on a plaque above the door. I even used it with my children, and they used it with theirs. However, this isn’t the most important lesson she gave me. What she demonstrated my entire life is how to be steady, even in the most challenging situations life has to offer.
She raised me by herself, so every bump, scrape, and broken bone — she was steady. Honestly, I don’t know how she did it. I remember being on the verge of losing it with my own kids, and I had a wife to back me up. To do it all alone? I don’t have the words.
That steadiness she showed me has served me well throughout my entire life. No matter what, I stay steady. I might be pissed off while I’m doing it — that trait definitely comes from my father. He had two modes: super cool or absolute death. Nothing in between. He kept people guessing because you never knew how he’d react. People say I do that too. I always swore I’d never be anything like him… well, oops.
It’s said that in life you have two families: the one you’re born into and the one you choose. My mother gave me the tools to build both. Her steadiness became my anchor, and whether I was dealing with work, parenting, or just the everyday chaos of life, I leaned on what she taught me — stay calm, handle your business, don’t fall apart.
And yeah, maybe I inherited some of my dad’s unpredictability too. But thanks to her, the foundation underneath is solid. That balance — between calm and chaos, between knowing when to hold it together and when to let it fly — that’s something I’ve carried into every relationship I’ve built, chosen or otherwise.
My chosen family has shown up for me in ways I never could’ve imagined. I’m truly blessed to have them in my life. Like all my family, they’ve been incredibly patient with me. I can be a lot sometimes — I know that. But they hang in there.
The challenges in life never really stop coming. But when you’ve got people who stick with you, who steady you, who love you even when you’re not at your best — you can get through anything.
In life, we have two families: the one we’re born into and the one we choose. I’m grateful for both.
One of my nephews stopped to visit. We talked about philosophy, music, and a bunch of other things. Almost like he knew I needed to get out of my own head for a moment and be reminded of something that’s always been soothing—music. After he had left, I plugged in the headphones and got to work.
Prince’s music has left a mark on humanity. However, the music I enjoyed the most was songs seldom played on the radio—the tracks only discussed quietly among the fans who kept searching for the ones that touched them deepest.
For me, “Sometimes It Snows in April” is one of those songs.
It’s not built for the charts. No booming drums or flashy guitar solos. Just a delicate piano, soft guitar, and Prince’s voice—fragile, almost whispering. It’s stripped down in a way that makes you sit still. Makes you feel.
The song was part of the Parade album in 1986, which doubled as the soundtrack to Under the Cherry Moon. Prince played Christopher Tracy in the film—a charming romantic who dies too soon. The song is what comes after: mourning, confusion, and the quiet heartbreak of losing someone who wasn’t supposed to be gone yet.
And Prince didn’t try to clean it up. He kept the raw demo. You can hear creaking chairs and fingers sliding on strings. Those imperfections? They’re what make it real.
The lyrics hit like a conversation you didn’t want to have but needed: “Sometimes it snows in April / Sometimes I feel so bad, so bad.” Simple words, but when Prince sings them, they carry weight. It’s not performance—it’s confession.
Then came April 21, 2016. Prince passed away. Suddenly, a song about losing someone too soon became eerily personal. It was recorded in April. He died in April. And just like that, it sounded like he’d written his own farewell without knowing it.
And here’s the part that always gets me—I often wonder why we don’t truly appreciate an artist until after their transition. Why do we wait? Why do the tributes flood in only once they’re gone? It’s a question that’s never been answered—at least not a good one.
Maybe it’s human nature. Maybe we think there’ll always be time. Maybe we don’t realize what someone gave us until we can’t get more of it.
With Prince, we had a genius in real-time. But songs like “Sometimes It Snows in April” remind us that his deepest gifts weren’t always the loudest. They were the quiet truths tucked in between the hits—the kind you don’t hear until you’re really listening.
“Sometimes It Snows in April” isn’t just about death. It’s about love, memory, and the strange ache of time. It’s about the moments we don’t talk about much—but feel the deepest.
And that’s why it still hurts. In the best kind of way.
“Duty is what we carry in silence, long after the reasons stop making sense.”
They said, Be all you can be, and we believed them. But we didn’t know at what cost.
There is a line—not drawn, but implied. A hush between steps, a rule never spoken aloud but lived as law. It was my job to hold the line. To guard it. Uphold it. Even on the days I couldn’t see it. Even when I wasn’t sure it was ever really there.
We lied to everyone that mattered. Spoke in half-truths, offered polished answers to unspoken questions. And over time, the lies started to sound like loyalty. We even convinced ourselves. Still—we held the line. We sacrificed everything for it. Time. Peace. Parts of ourselves no apology will ever retrieve. But we believed our sacrifices had meaning. And maybe they did. Maybe meaning isn’t always clean.
There were things we couldn’t say—not because we didn’t want to, but because the job required silence. Duty demanded presence, not explanation. We chose service over clarity. Responsibility over release. That’s what no one tells you: sometimes loyalty means carrying the truth quietly so others don’t have to.
When the dust settled, we tried to find something to hold on to—something we could trust, something true, something pure. Not perfect. Just real. Something that wouldn’t dissolve when we stopped performing.
And yes—we sometimes lived in the dark. Operated in shadows. Did things we could never speak of. Things people will never know. But there was always a light. A flicker. A guide, buried deep, pulling us back. Even when we wandered, even when we hardened. Some of our paths were rockier than others, but still—there was hope. Always hope.
I traced the curve of the line out of habit, out of fear, out of love for something I couldn’t name anymore. The line is not a fence. It’s a suggestion, soft as a breath on glass, sharp as memory. You learn to shape yourself around it—to fold your hunger, to tailor your voice. To make small beautiful, and still wonder why it feels like vanishing.
Some days, it glows. Other days, it disappears, but you still feel it—in the pause before truth, in the way your shoulders remember how to shrink. Still, I held it. With both hands. Tired hands. Loyal hands.
And then one day, without rebellion, without even deciding, I stepped. Nothing broke. No thunder. No light. Just space. Quiet and wide. I waited for collapse. It didn’t come. The air was different here. Not sweeter, not easier—just honest. There was wind, and with it, direction.
I looked back. The line was still there, but fainter now, as if it never meant to stay. And I understood: it was never a barrier, only a shadow cast by belief. And belief, like shadow, can shift with the sun.
We did what we thought was right. We held the line, lived in the shadows, and told the stories people needed to hear. And through it all, we tried to provide hope—while quietly, desperately, trying to hold onto our own.
Remember when “unprecedented times” became everyone’s favorite phrase? A true statement for the memories of most of the world’s inhabitants, but it still got on my nerves. I held my breath, waiting for someone to throw in the word surreal and say something like, “It’s so surreal, these are unprecedented times.” I swear, I would’ve walked away screaming as someone gently muttered, “Poor fella, everyone’s so overwhelmed.”
So—real talk: How did you adapt to the chaos Covid-19 dropped into our lives? Did you start baking sourdough? Rethink your entire career? Form a codependent relationship with your couch? Go over your data plan because Netflix, RPGs, and Zoom somehow became a lifestyle? Grow a beard that now has its own personality? (How’s that going, by the way?) Man, that time produced some truly unfortunate facial hair. Mine looked like a depressed squirrel had taken up residence on my face for a solid month. Eventually, it evened out—but the trauma lingers.
For me, my home became my fortress of solitude—equal parts sanctuary, bunker, and blanket fort. I was lucky: my stepmother, who lived through WWII, told me to stock up on essentials before the lockdown. And I listened.
The provisions—dry goods, paper products, all the basics you don’t think about until they vanish—were stacked neatly and inventoried like I was prepping for the end times. All of it sat on those hideous, industrial metal shelves that belong in basements or crime scenes, not in the middle of a living room.
But they got the job done. Ugly, but reliable. Kind of like the year itself.
I still can’t believe I actually listened, but it made all the difference. It was like the world we knew vanished before our eyes. People became mean and rude for what seemed like no reason.
But looking back, I think it was fear. Everyone just wanted something—anything—they could control. A place that felt safe.
While the world panicked under a double pandemic—Covid, that beast right there in your face that you had no idea which way it would attack, and Hysteria, the silent rogue creeping in from the shadows—I stayed still, battling my own fears.
Even though I was stocked, prepared, trained—it only provided the illusion of calm. A false sense of control.
I knew it. But I leaned on it anyway.
Because sometimes pretending you’re okay is the only way to survive long enough to actually be okay.
But I’ve been here before—in a different kind of war.
In battle, I was surrounded by people who didn’t just know how to survive. We knew what it took to live—no matter how damn hard it got.
That kind of clarity doesn’t leave you. It changes how you move through silence, how you handle fear, how you hold yourself when no one else is watching.
And because of the kind of isolation that comes with PTSD, I didn’t mind being cut off from people. If anything, it gave me space to finally look at my life without distraction.
I realized medication couldn’t fix everything. I had to put in the work. I had to face the demons—even when it felt like I was the demon.
It’s wild, the stories we tell ourselves about what happened to us. Over time, they twist. They shape how we react, instead of letting us respond.
I saw people pretend they were fine—but you could see the cracks.
You offer to help, because you know that darkness. You’ve walked alone in it. And you don’t want anyone else to be there if they’re not ready.
But the rub?
Sometimes, ready or not, you have to walk it anyway.
We’ve made strides in breaking the stigma around mental health. But no one wants to admit they need help—because no one wants to feel different. Or maybe the better word is broken.
But here’s the truth:
It’s okay to be broken. Everyone is. Some more, some less—but broken just the same.
And so we cope. We sip something, cry in the car, buy stuff we don’t need, gamble what we shouldn’t, scroll endlessly, smile when it’s easier than explaining.
All of it—just trying to hold the pieces together.
The world is big. So vast. And we are connected in so many different ways.
So I have to ask—why do we live it so small?
Speak your truth. As Uncle Walt said: sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
You never know when your words will reach someone at just the right moment—when they need it most—to begin to heal.
When you’re five, everything feels big. The world, your dreams, your backpack.
But as you get older, you can’t always hold onto things without a little help.
That’s what happened when I found it— a flash of memory caught in an old photo, a school project that somehow survived. Battered, scarred, but solid. Like the dreams taped inside it.
I just wanted to fly. I couldn’t explain why, not then. I just did.
To see the world. The wonders from our primers, the postcard places that looked too perfect to be real.
Maybe I’d discover new lands, find cool toys, read comics in French. Were mummies scary? I needed to know.
Was riding a motorcycle as cool as it looked in the movies? Could I jump cars like Evel Knievel? Would I one day ride with a girl on the back, smiling like it was the best thing ever?
I knew I wasn’t old enough for that part. Maybe when I get big.
Would I be able to sing and dance? Be cool like Elvis? Tough like G.I. Joe? Stretch like Stretch Armstrong? Or maybe I’d just build the wild stuff I made with my Legos.
But mostly… Mostly, I wanted to make my mom proud.
And now— I did fly.
France, Italy, Spain, Japan—majestic in ways no book ever captured. There’s nothing like flying over treetops with the chopper doors open. Heart racing. Then pounding. Blood surging through my veins. I felt something I still can’t describe with words.
I never jumped cars, but I had that girl on the back. Her arms around me, her heartbeat against mine, that sharp little yelp when things got wild. Yeah, that was something.
I don’t sing, but boy, did I dance. And when I stopped… I got fat.
Some say I was tougher than G.I. Joe. And somehow, my influence stretched across the globe. But no one will ever know my name.
What I remember most— Mom’s smile as she talked about “the grands,” each one certain they were her favorite. Each one knowing they were loved.
When you’re young, you wander through life with a carefree attitude, convinced that nothing tragic will ever befall you. It’s not that you think you’re made of steel; it’s just that misfortune always seems to strike elsewhere, affecting other people. You know these people—your classmates who sit a few rows ahead in math, friends who share secrets during recess, rivals who challenge you in sports, and those vaguely familiar faces passing in the school hallway whose names always escape you. “Who is that?” You recognize them; they might live across the street or next door, but their names never stick. You catch wind of their troubles in hushed conversations over cafeteria trays or notice the signs—a bruise blooming under an eye or a sudden empty desk where someone used to sit. But you? You’re shielded by an invisible armor. Untouchable. Until one day, that armor cracks, and the reality that you’re just as vulnerable as everyone else comes crashing down.
As a guy growing up, you were conditioned to believe the worst thing you could be called was a wimp or a pussy. Those words stung like a slap to the face. But the worst of all was “pansy.” It technically meant the same thing, yet it carried a unique venom, like an elite-tier insult that could ignite a brawl. They were fighting words, as the old-timers would say. I often imagined a secret list of such words that, when uttered, left you with no choice but to unleash the rage pent up inside the beast within us all, a primal code of manhood handed down through the ages by our Neanderthal ancestors. The rationale behind it was nonexistent—nonsensical, absurd, or downright foolish didn’t even begin to cover it. I even went so far as to ask friends and acquaintances, hoping to uncover this mythical list’s existence, but they just gave me strange looks as if I was the odd one out. “Weirdo.” There’s another term I’m certain once ranked high on that clandestine list.
If there was one thing certain to amplify male foolishness, it was the presence of a girl. You might assume it would be the confident ones with a smooth stride and an easy grin. But you’d be mistaken. It was simply the presence of any female. Something about her steady, evaluating gaze seemed to flick a switch in our lizard brains. Suddenly, we were all posturing like peacocks, vying for attention as if auditioning for the role of “Alpha Male #2” in a poorly scripted high school drama.
“Cut…cut, cut, cut…” the director’s voice echoed through the set, slicing through our bravado. He rose from his worn director’s chair with an exasperated sigh, his footsteps heavy as he approached. He muttered incoherently, his brows furrowing in frustration. Turning abruptly, he addressed a bewildered production assistant who appeared as if they had stumbled onto the wrong set altogether. “It’s missing… I don’t know,” he said, rubbing his temple as if the motion might conjure clarity from the chaos in his mind. The PA shrugged, their confusion mirroring his own.
“More, you know? More,” he declared, fixing his gaze on you with an intensity that suggested the simple word held the universe’s mysteries. It might, who knows? Because at that moment, you felt the weight of impending humiliation hanging over you like a storm cloud, threatening to unleash if you failed to decipher this cryptic instruction. So you reset, ready to reenact the scene with exaggerated bravado and clumsy confidence. A muscular guy, his shirt straining against bulging biceps, lunged forward to take a swing at a smaller guy. The smaller one stood his ground, fists clenched and eyes steely—not because he had faith in his victory, but because maintaining dignity in defeat was preferable to being labeled a pansy. Who needs self-preservation when fragile masculinity whispers its deceitful promises of status and respect in your ear?
The worst beating I ever took wasn’t even for something I did. And that, frankly, was offensive. I was the kind of kid who had done plenty to earn a few ass-kickings, but this one? This was charity work.
Susan Randle—radiant in a way that made heads turn in every hallway—sat beside me in the darkened movie theater. During what she half-jokingly called our “date” (really just two people sharing a row while an action film played), she eyed me with a mischievous smirk and accused me of being gay simply because I hesitated when she leaned over, voice low and daring, to ask if I wanted to “do it.” The dim light flickering over her face caught the earnest sparkle in her eyes before she suddenly closed the distance and pressed her lips against mine. In that charged moment, the unwritten, yet unanimously understood rule against “unsanctioned sugar”—the secret code dictating who could kiss whom—reared its head. No one ever seemed to grant an exception, whether you were a girl or a guy. And here I was, trapped between the dreaded labels: on one end lay the desperate horndog willing to prove his manhood at every twist, and on the other, the discredited possibility of being gay. I wasn’t interested in becoming just another name on her ever-growing list or dealing with the fallout of shattering her carefully constructed illusion of desirability. When a boy disrupted that illusion, the consequences were swift and ruthless.
That catalog wasn’t a myth—it was as real as the whispered rankings that circulated among us. It wasn’t enough to simply admire the “right” girl; if you dared to look away or, heaven forbid, question the unspoken challenges, your name was scrawled in the ledger of sins. Failed to laugh at the jokes delivered with just the right touch of irony, dress in conforming denim and sneakers, or walk with that practiced swagger? Sure enough, it was marked on the list.
My reluctance to follow these unwritten rules quickly made me a target. Over the following weeks, a series of meticulously scheduled beatings forced me to confront the cruel reality of teenage hierarchies. After school, I would find myself cornered in the deserted back lot behind the gym, where a group of boys awaited with grim determination. They’d shout derogatory names—“fairy boy” and a particular favorite, “pirate,” a crude truncation of “butt pirate”—words spat out with the casual cruelty of a rehearsed routine. Each blow landed with precision, and amid the sting and shock, I discovered a perverse sort of order; they made sure I wasn’t crippled for good. I clutched my prized 96 mph fastball as if it were a lifeline and leaned into my natural left-handed stance, determined to keep my place on the team even if I was labeled a “fairy boy” behind closed doors.
By the time the school year drew to a close, the beatings ceased as if a final judgment had been passed in some bizarre, secret rite of passage. One by one, the bullies patted me on the back with a mixture of grudging admiration and hollow platitudes, congratulating me on having “taken it like a man.” It was as if surviving their collective assault were the final exam in a twisted curriculum of manhood. They’d shrug and say, “It wasn’t personal. It was just something that needed doing.” To them, such senseless violence was nothing short of an honorable tradition—a sacred duty executed without a shred of genuine empathy.
That summer, I found brief refuge away from the tyranny of high school corridors with my father in Northern California. He was a truck driver, his bronzed, weathered hands as familiar with the hum of diesel engines as he was with the hard lines of a life lived outdoors, where emotions were as heavy as the cargo he hauled. My parents’ origins were a collage of chance encounters: they’d originally met at a sultry George Benson concert in the Midwest, where the guitar licks sultry under a neon haze had paved the way for something unexpected. Within nine months of that chance meeting, I came into the picture—a living reminder of their brief yet potent infatuation. They had the wisdom to avoid the charade of forced domesticity; soon after, my mom returned east while my dad continued chasing horizons out west. Mysterious fragments of half-truths and secrets that always belong to a larger narrative are as American as elitism and Chevrolets and need no full explanation.
I used the prompts listed below in this bit of flash fiction
Immersing myself in the musical offerings of my fellow melody enthusiasts has been an absolute delight. Each shared track opened new doors, introducing me to artists I’d never encountered and fresh interpretations of beloved classics. The experience was a powerful reminder of music’s eternal nature and remarkable ability to mend the soul. As I pondered my contribution to this musical exchange, I drew blanks beyond the familiar territory of standards. Rather than force a conventional choice, I ventured into uncharted waters. Taking a bold step away from my usual selections, I dove deep into my carefully curated blues collection – a genre I rarely explore in these challenges. What I discovered there was nothing short of magical – a hidden treasure patiently waiting for its moment to shine. Like a dusty gem catching the light for the first time, this blues piece emerged from the depths of my collection, ready to share its brilliance.
Let me share with you this incredible musical journey that starts with “Work with Me, Annie,” a deliciously cheeky rhythm and blues gem that burst onto the scene in 1954. Hank Ballard and The Midnighters crafted this irresistible tune with its playful winks and nudges, wrapped in an infectious melody that just makes you want to move. The song’s magic lies in its teasing nature – never crossing the line but dancing right up to it with a mischievous grin.
But here’s where my musical adventure takes an exciting turn. While exploring the blues rabbit hole, I stumbled upon Snooky Pryor’s take on this classic from his 1999 album “Shake My Hand.” Oh, what a discovery! Pryor takes this already spicy number and adds his own special sauce – that soul-stirring harmonica of his weaves through the melody like a river of pure blues feeling. He doesn’t just cover the song; he reimagines it, breathing new life into those suggestive lyrics with his raw, authentic blues voice while his harmonica tells stories of its own.
It’s like finding a cherished vintage photograph that’s been lovingly restored and enhanced, keeping all its original charm while adding new layers of depth and character. Pryor’s version is a beautiful testament to how great music can evolve while staying true to its roots, creating something that feels both wonderfully familiar and excitingly fresh.
Lyrics:
Song by Hank Ballard
(guitar intro)
(Oooh!) Work with me, Annie (a-um, a-um, a-um, a-um) Work with me, Annie Ooo-wee! Work with me, Annie Work with me, Annie
Work with me, Ann-ie-e Let’s get it while the gettin’ is good
(So good, so good, so good, so good)
Annie, please don’t cheat (va-oom, va-oom, va-oom, va-oom) Give me all my meat (ooo!) Ooo-hoo-wee So good to me
Work with me Ann-ie-e Now, let’s get it while the gettin’ is good
(So good, so good, so good, so good)
A-ooo, my-ooo My-ooo-ooo-wee Annie, oh how you thrill me Make my head go round and round And all my love come dow-ow-own (Ooo!)
Work with me, Annie (a-um, a-um, a-um, a-um) Work with me, Annie Don’t be ‘shamed To work with me, Annie Call my name Work with me, Annie
A-work with me, Ann-ie-e Let’s get it while the gettin’ is good
(So good, so good, so good, so good)
So Good!
(guitar & instrumental)
Oh, our hot lips kissing (a-um, a-um, a-um, a-um) Girl, I’ll beg mercy Oh, hugging and more teasing Don’t want no freezing
A-work with me, Ann-ie-e Let’s get it while the gettin’ is good
(So good, so good, so good, so good)
Ooo-ooo Umm-mmm-mmm Ooo-ooo-ooo
FADES
Ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo.
While treasure hunting in my blues archive, something magical happened – you know how music just grabs you sometimes? There I was, ready to wrap things up, when the blues spirits themselves seemed to whisper, “Hold up now, we’ve got more stories to tell!” And just like that, this hypnotic groove reached out and caught me, channeling the spirit of the legendary John Lee Hooker himself. That unmistakable rhythm, that raw, pulsing energy – it was impossible to resist.
And I wasn’t the only one feeling it! There was Guppy, my faithful furry companion, already swaying to the beat. In a moment of pure joy, I reached for her paws, and we shared this impromptu dance party. Reality (and our respective ages) quickly reminded us to take a seat, but that groove? Oh, it wasn’t letting go! So there we were, two old souls – me in my trusty chair, Guppy on her favorite pillow – still caught up in the rhythm, still moving and grooving, still feeling that blues magic work its way through our bones.
You know those perfect little moments when music just takes over, and age becomes just a number? This was one of those precious times when the blues reached out and reminded us that you’re never too old to feel the rhythm, never too dignified to let loose and wiggle along with the beat. Guppy and I might not be spring chickens anymore, but in that moment, we were timeless dancers in our own little blues club.
Let me tell you about this absolute gem I uncovered – “Got to Have Money” by Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson. Talk about finding the perfect blues treasure! This piece just oozes that authentic Chicago blues spirit, the kind that grabs you by the soul and doesn’t let go. Johnson doesn’t just play the blues; he lives and breathes it through every note, every guitar lick, every word that flows from his lips.
You know those songs that just tell it like it is? This is one of those honest-to-goodness truth-tellers. Johnson wraps his gritty, soulful voice around a story we all know too well – that endless dance with the almighty dollar. But it’s not just about the message; it’s how he delivers it. Those guitar riffs? Pure magic! They weave through the song like a conversation, sometimes whispering, sometimes crying out, but always speaking straight to the heart.
And that groove! Oh my goodness, that groove! It’s the kind that gets under your skin and makes your feet move whether you want them to or not. Johnson has this incredible way of taking something as universal as money troubles and turning it into this beautiful, moving piece of art that makes you feel less alone in your struggles. It’s like he’s sitting right there with you, nodding his head and saying, “Yeah, I’ve been there too, friend.”
This is exactly why I love diving into these blues archives – you never know when you’ll surface with a piece that speaks such raw truth while making your spirit dance at the same time.
Lyrics:
Yes, a little drive by upon the hill And this is where It begin to start Mama told Papa, said “Pack up son!” “We gonna leave this sow land again”
I was just a little bitty boy ′Bout the age of five Too much work Not enough money This what it’s all about
Got to have money Got to have some money, y′all Got to have money Got to have some money, y’all
Muddy Waters got money Lightnin’ Hopkins got it too Tyrone got money Want me some money too
Got to have money Can′t get along without it Got to have some money Can′t get along without it
I used to have you water 15 bottles For 15 cents a day Shame a boy my age Worked so hard everyday
But now I’m grown I′m on my own And this I want you to know If you want me to work for you, baby You got to give me big dough
‘Cause I got to have money Got to have money, y′all Can’t get along without it Got to have money, y′all
They say money is a sign for sympathy The root of all evil If this is what money really is Call the Doctor ’cause I got a fever
I got to have money Got to have money, y’all Can′t get along without it Got to have money, y′all
Got to have some money Got to have some money I got to have some money
Writer(s): John T Williams
Here is the link to the challenge. Thanks Jim for hosting I had blast with one.
“Fade In, Fade Out” by Nothing More is a deeply emotional and introspective song that explores the universal themes of time, legacy, and the cyclical nature of life. Released as part of their album “The Stories We Tell Ourselves” (2017), the song delves into the relationship between generations, specifically focusing on the bond between a parent and child. Through its poignant lyrics, “Fade In, Fade Out” reflects on the inevitable passage of time, the experience of watching one’s parents age, and the desire to make the most of the moments shared with loved ones.
The song begins with a perspective that captures the essence of watching one’s child grow up, imparting wisdom, and hoping they find their way in life without losing themselves. As it progresses, the narrative shifts to express the child’s perspective—acknowledging the sacrifices made by the parents, the realization of their mortality, and the deep wish to carry forward their legacy. With its haunting refrain, the chorus emphasizes the transient nature of life, urging listeners to cherish their time with loved ones before it’s too late.
Musically, “Fade In, Fade Out” is marked by its dynamic shifts, moving from softer, reflective verses to powerful, emotionally charged choruses, mirroring the emotional depth and complexity of the subject matter. The song is a testament to Nothing More’s ability to weave intricate narratives through their music, offering listeners not just a song, but a profound emotional experience that resonates with the universal human condition of love, loss, and the hope of legacy. To hear this song preformed live adds another layer to it.
LYRICS:
Just the other day I looked at my father It was the first time I saw he’d grown old Canyons through his skin and the rivers that made them Carve the stories I was told
He said “Son, I have watched you fade in You will watch me fade out I have watched you fade in You will watch me fade out When the grip leaves my hand I know you won’t let me down
Go and find your way Leave me in your wake Always push through the pain And don’t run away from change Never settle Make your mark Hold your head up Follow your heart Follow your heart”
Just the other day I stared at the ocean With every new wave another must go One day you’ll remember us laughing One day you’ll remember my passion One day you’ll have one of your own
And I say “Son, I have watched you fade in You will watch me fade out When the grip leaves my hand I know you won’t let me down
Go and find your way Leave me in your wake Always push through the pain And don’t run away from change Never settle Make your Mark Hold your head up Follow your heart Follow your heart, follow your heart, follow your heart”
We all get lost sometimes Trying to find what we’re looking for We all get lost sometimes Trying to find what we’re looking for I have watched you fade in You will watch me fade out When the grip leaves my hand I know you won’t let me down
Go and find your way Leave me in your wake Always push through the pain And don’t run away from change Never settle Make your Mark Hold your head up Follow your heart Follow your heart, follow your heart”
When the morning comes and takes me I promise I have taught you everything that you need In the night you’ll dream of so many things But find the ones that bring you life and you’ll find me
Thanks to Jim Adams for hosting and another excellent suggestion by Nancy, aka The Sicilian Storyteller
Memoirs of Madness 