Holy Embers of Dreams

High Summer

2012-01-30T11:09:00.000+13:00

The boy is growing. The man watches the boy climb the dusty trail, one step at a time, and wonders if once upon a time he too climbed such a hill, his father climbing up behind him.

The man remembers a snowy field, being pulled on a sled by his father. The weight and firmness of the steel runners cutting through the whiteness. They were far from home, it seemed, in a vast and silent world. He had no idea, the man is sure, of one day pulling sleds or hiking hills.

The boy and his father reach the summit. The grassy path is matted and brown now, the green of the wet winter burned out by the summer heat.

The boy and his father have some food at this spot at the edge of the world. They take in the nourishment of this place. Perhaps they are both growing stronger.

The man is unsettled by the transposition of father and son, boy and man. He wants to linger a bit. But the boy takes his hand and leads him down the trail again.

Somehow It's November

2011-12-13T10:22:00.000+13:00

and there are flyers to fly and
bookings to book and
names to remember and the
house needs tidying and buses need riding
and markets need marketing
and the holidays are coming
(with in-laws visiting)
and there is work to be done
and
meetings to call
and bone broth to brew
and stories to tell
and fears to face
and courage to find
a woman to love
a boy to hold
and many, many
miles
to run

But

I look at the boy's face
while he sleeps and
hear the waves pounding on the shore
just outside our little white house and
the windows rattle in the sea wind like
something from a distant age
I once knew and
I remember myself and know that when
I am right here and nowhere else
really right here
I am already
home.

Right There All Over

2011-10-11T10:52:00.000+13:00

Right Here All Over (Occupy Wall St.) from Alex Mallis on Vimeo.

Three!

2011-08-30T14:02:00.003+12:00

Here's a tired old joke: one moment your son is being born and dropping into your expectant hands, the next he's offering you a bowl of Noodle Chewbacca soup.

HAWK: I will cook it and you will eat it!
RYAN: I'll get sick!
HAWK: YES!

It goes by crazy fast. And also crazy good.

I'll steal a line from one of Hawk's good friends, the man with the yellow hat: "I'm proud of you. Today, the whole world is proud of you." Happy Birthday, Hawk.

A Good Day

2011-08-19T10:43:00.001+12:00

New Digs 2.0

2011-07-08T12:31:00.001+12:00

One way to draw a woman's ire, if you're interested in that kind of thing, is to move house and then, when asked if you have doubts about the move, to answer honestly that you do. This approach is particularly effective - and I'm speaking philosophically here - if your woman has been the principal architect of such a move, has supported the "direction" you provided, followed the project brief, as it were, to the letter.

In this way we rather suddenly found ourselves living in a beach cottage in the neighborhood of Seatoun, on Worser Bay, on the peninsula of Miramar, Wellington, New Zealand, the World. And if any doubts were expressed and any ire drawn, they were resolved after only a couple days; for living in a beach cottage on the water and across from mountains is pretty damn awesome.

It's not like things weren't already pretty spiffy. The routines, the ways and means, we had them all down to a science. A seven-minute walk to work, another five to the harbor. A Victorian house tucked away in a lush park. A split schedule where Jenifer and I each worked half a day in the office, half a day in the field with Hawk.

A great big abundant life.

We first became acquainted with Seatoun during our first visit to New Zealand. Our tour guide Jack drove our party through the seaside suburb to show us the grounds where Orlando and the Hobbits had trained for The Lord of the Rings. Over the past year, as we contemplated which neighborhood to settle in, Seatoun kept coming back to us. Okay, mostly to me, as such a move would require a wholesale lifestyle change and put us about as far away as possible from the Steiner school we were investigating for our son. But Jenifer plugged away on Trade Me, scouring the listings for houses here, there, and everywhere; and ones we really liked popped up time and again in Seatoun; and we suddenly started making lots of new friends who lived in Seatoun. Eventually Jenifer's logic centers had no choice but to acknowledge the fundamental correctness of my intuition. (Boy, I'm gonna get it.)

Our place is small but cozy and full of what the Danes call hygge, that warm feeling of contentment and well-being that comes from sitting by a warm fire at the end of a long day out of doors. This time around we have a mud room ("the airlock"), a wee back yard, and even a greenhouse, which Hawk already refers to as "the playroom" and which will soon feature a sandbox. The house faces northeast, which means more sunlight. The key feature, though, is the view. Our windows look out on wind-carved rocks (crawling with hermit crabs the size of peppercorns), brilliant green water, the endless passing of ferries and frigates, and an active, welcoming community: walkers, dogs, triathletes, the odd blue penguin. Everyone here seems to keep their curtains open most of the time, and you often can't help but look in (or out) because of the view.

Where Te Aro was wooded, dark, dense, Seatoun is open, bright, airy. As a new friend observed. our move quite literally affords us a broader perspective. Our walking world is now circumscribed not by office buildings and bus lanes but by Scorching Bay to the North and Dorset Point to the South. At the latter Hawk and I now routinely "go an an adventure," a nature hike along the rocky shore that wraps around to Breaker Bay or up the Pass of Branda through the "poky" pine trees of the Beacon Hill Reserve. From here you see the flat blue line of Cook Strait, which separates the North and South Islands. Massive shipping vessels crest what looks like the edge of the world. Here if feels like we are at the edge of the world.

This is our neighborhood now. This is where Hawk will grow up, where he will clamber through the bush with his goblins-in-arms, where he will mount spy missions on unsuspecting hikers and investigate long-abandoned military bunkers and sit in the tall grass of the old Maori pa and listen to the wind.

Shortly after we moved I had occasion to walk by the old place. Passing through the park beneath it, I suddenly felt very clear: our energy had moved on. I had grieved the place, our ways and means, the morning after our move. Now, I smiled in gratitude for our entry into a new world. Our old house protected us, held us during a year that was at times very difficult: one way to make enemies, if you're interested in that kind of thing, is to take over an existing business. Fortunately, it's also a way to make friends.

No, the move was necessary, and if any doubts arose, they did so only because, as is ever the case with leaps in the dark, we are called to make them before we think we are ready. Or maybe that's just how it is with grownups. As Hawk would yell every time before sprinting down the path to our old house: "Two, three, go!"

V48HOURS: PLOVER

2011-06-23T10:23:00.001+12:00

One thing leads to another, and a chance meeting last year at Christopher Vogler's Writer's Journey workshop at Park Road Post led to new friends and an invitation to join a filmmaking team for this year's V48HOURS Furious Filmmaking competition.

V48HOURS is something of a tradition here in New Zealand. Hundreds of teams around the country submit themselves to the opportunity to create a short film in the span of a single weekend. You don't know until 7 pm Friday evening the parameters that will shape your film. At that time you're handed a genre, a character name and characteristic, a line of dialogue, and a prop. Our prospective locations, theoretically suitable for multiple genres, had been secured over the previous month by producer Carlos Ramirez Laloli and director Dan Lynch. Would we get Western, Musical, Biopic?

My writing partner, Jacob Rosevear, and I worked on the script through the night, turning it over to the production team around 7:30 Saturday morning. After feedback and a quick rewrite, the team was off and running. Afterwards I was, as the Kiwis say, shattered. I managed 90 minutes of sleep and then went to the set. Jacob, God bless him, didn't sleep at all, filming until 9 pm Saturday night.

The cast and crew were terrific. We were all running flat out, and I wondered if our compressed production was anything like the final days (months?) of a major production. Sadly, technical issues prevented our film from competing, but it was still screened a couple days later at the Reading Courtenay Cinema - a big thrill to see our work on the big screen. Enjoy!

Plover - Team CineTrance (2011) from Daniel Lynch on Vimeo.

Darth Vader and the Boy

2011-05-05T10:28:00.003+12:00

When it comes to Star Wars, I've been very careful about what I've told my son. As a general and admittedly somewhat loose rule, Jenifer and I have tried to limit his media exposure. No need to dunk his head in a bath of high-energy imagery just yet, so the theory goes. For the most part we stick to books, and for all of us the evening ritual of lighting the fire fairy and reading stories is one of the high points of the day.

So when I opened the package from America that contained our Christmas gifts and I pulled out a hefty hardcover, J.W. Rinzler's The Making of The Empire Strikes Back, Hawk immediately and irrevocably saw both my unrestrained excitement and the power of one of the world's great iconic characters: Darth Vader.

Hawk gasped and covered his face. "Who's that guy?" he asked, peeking.

I told him he was Darth Vader and demonstrated his idiosyncratic breathing technique, and that was all he needed to produce his assessment: "Darth Vader is pretty scary, because he's pretty scary." Luke was named, appropriately, the Boy.

For days Hawk would tell the story of Darth Vader and the Boy, and soon we were recreating the climactic duel on Bespin in sidewalk chalk on the path outside our house. I was charged with the task of drawing the Boy, but the rollerskates are all Hawk.

Around the same time we came across the Volkswagen commercial, "The Force," and I just had to share it with my young apprentice. The pint-sized Sith Lord soon came to be known as Funny Darth Vader, and sure enough Hawk incorporated this version into his own mythology.

"Come here, Dad! I made Darth Vader! I will show you. You'll like it." See for yourself.

From a South Island Postcard

2011-03-14T09:49:00.000+13:00

Alone we are born
And die alone;
Yet see the red-gold cirrus
Over snow-mountain shine.

Upon the upland road
Ride easy, stranger:
Surrender to the sky
Your heart of anger.

"High Country Weather," James K. Baxter

It's Not Tomorrow Anymore

2011-02-28T20:29:00.002+13:00

And that's putting it mildly. I have to give Hawk credit here. It's his line, and his response to my explanation that tomorrow (meaning, at that point in time, New Year's Day) our South Island holiday would come to an end and we would fly home to Wellington. Not today. This was a colossal disappointment, because here we were in the most! amazing! place! ever!—the Christchurch airport, in point of fact—and Aunt Edna was going to be riding the airplane home (to San Francisco); whereas we had the unfortunate destiny of heading back to the parking lot and our rental car, to return for our flight tomorrow.

"No, Dad. It's not tomorrow anymore."

I explained that our fate was actually a double-plus–good fortune, as seeing Edna off meant two trips to the airport instead of just one.

But Hawk wasn't having it. He wanted to ride the airplane, and he wanted to ride it now.

You have to understand that this kid loves to travel. He loves airplanes, he loves helicopters, he loves "hot balloons." He hasn't yet directly experienced the latter two modes of transport, but he has plans. Indeed, it's no small thing to visit Frank Kitts Park, a playground by the Wellington waterfront, precisely because it's situated directly across from the HELiPRO touring company.

Whenever a helicopter takes off or "lands down," whatever Hawk is up to—clambering up a sliding board, using the swivel-mounted telescope as a dragon-slaying slingshot (after his friend Hiccup), or simply gallivanting—comes to an immediate end. For a moment, he stands transfixed, fully possessed by the sheer awesomeness of this flying machine; and, then, senses returning, he triumphantly names the object of his adoration—"Helicopter! (which to the untrained ear sounds like "hoe-coptah!")—and enjoins his playground cohorts to feel the excitement, the power and the glory that is happening just over there. If they look up at all, it is only for a few seconds. No matter. Hawk returns his attention to the event at hand, all the while his fingers moving as if, at that very moment, those microscopic dendritic connections are forming and he is piloting the craft himself, virtually. I swear, I fully expect him to turn to me at some point in the not-too-distant future and say: "I know kung fu."

Hawk also loves cars, which made our tour of the South Island (as they say here) easy done. Two-to-four-hour stints in the back of the car? In the car seat? No problem! Dad, on the other hand, sitting in the front of the car, in the driver's seat, on the right-hand side of the vehicle, on the left-hand side of the road, had to contend with wholly new versions of physics and instinct. But these parameters apparently would have been no trouble for Hawk, who on more than one occasion scrambled into the driver's seat of the parked car and directed me to the car seat, as (he informed us) he was now in possession of a driver's license!

I can't fault him for trying. His innate sense of speed, his love of zooming!, his passions—all point to his ability to be effortlessly in the moment at all times. I suspect it's his sheer presence that explains why our sense of time here in New Zealand is so altered (we've already been here a year?), and why at the end of the day, during storytime, Hawk is not the only one approaching sleep. I never understood how or why childrearing was so often described as exhausting. It's the presence demanded of us. The focus. The high alert. We have no choice, no course, but to learn swiftly that the usual patterns may not apply, that flipping a familiar control may activate not the turn signal but the windshield wipers, and that, if we are not doggedly mindful, we risk driving headlong into a large tour bus, or worse. Nope, it's not tomorrow anymore. It's better.

Ryan + the Machine

2010-11-09T18:15:00.000+13:00

Where do we find our inspiration? Why do some people, ideas, places pursue us across space and time, grab hold of us, haunt us?

Sometimes it wafts up through the courtyard in your apartment in Copenhagen and calls you down to the quay. Sometimes it comes up through the floorboards, when the neighbors below are holding a party, and you are instantly and forever drawn to its particular alchemy of voice, instrumentation, and arrangement, however muffled, and you wonder with heartache if you will ever hear this one song again; and then you do hear it again, at a birthday party in a restaurant, and you ask a suspiciously with-it young person whose CD collection (should he know what CDs are) did not reach its apex in, for example, 1996, and he tells you that you are searching for something called Florence + the Machine.

Sometimes you write a really long sentence.

I suppose the mystical answer, the Jungian answer, is that we find something of ourselves in the things that find us. And whatever light (and darkness) we find elsewhere are already in us, our built-in star chart to discovering what strength we may yet possess, what demons below deck we carry.

I do not own a Florence + the Machine CD, have not yet downloaded a digital copy, have only watched several (visually stunning) videos on the website. I know that "Dog Days Are Over" is the thing that hooked me, and that "Cosmic Love" is even better, and so I look up its lyrics and can do nothing but smile, and laugh a little, and give thanks, when I find words from an artist who may as well be on the other side of the Cosmos and yet somehow seems to know what I'm searching for:

I took the stars from my eyes,
And then I made a map,
I knew that somehow,
I could find my way back,

Then I heard your heart beating, you were darkness too,
So I stayed in the darkness with you.

Here and Back Again

2010-10-27T18:16:00.004+13:00

Let me just put this out there: this place is great. And by this place, I mean Wellington. New Zealand. Middle-earth.

On Monday, Jenifer, Hawk, and I attended the Wellington rally to keep the production of The Hobbit here in New Zealand. Joining us were our friends Jack, Aiko, Grant, and Steve (who's neatly summarized the whole affair here), along with several thousand proud Kiwis who came out to proclaim to Warner Bros., an Australian actor's union, and the world their pride in their film industry.

The event took place in Wellington's Civic Square. It's a familiar haunt for Hawk and me, as several times a week we pass through it on our way to the waterfront, each time Hawk delighting in the great "sky ball!"--a globe of silver ferns that hangs over its center. Through the courtyard and over the City to Sea Bridge, where the wide rim of the harbor opens up, where the city itself encircles you in its green water and hillside houses and misty mountains.

It's magic in this spot, and now all the more so for the gathering of filmmakers and fans and everyday folk who understand just how important a certain line of creative work has become. More, much more is on the line than money as Warner Bros. decides whether The Hobbit will be made in New Zealand. I can't imagine anything like this positive, peaceful "rally" happening in the States. Not that people there don't join together to support a cause, but here in New Zealand there's a feeling of ownership, a feeling that film itself is a community enterprise. It's been said many times that the Lord of the Rings Trilogy was made not by a director, nor even a team of filmmakers, but by an entire nation.

Of necessity I've been working almost exclusively on our business (we're only a few weeks away from unveiling our fully operational website). But so far my experiences echo what I've been hearing and continue to hear, again at this rally: that the film industry in Wellington--an industry whose technical infrastructure, indeed its pounding heart, was largely built by Sirs Peter and Richard--is what Hollywood was in its early days. The dream is alive here, where filmmakers are knighted national treasures and joyfully lead a people's collective longing to create something great.

UPDATE 28 October: The Hobbit stays! Check The Noldor Blog for details.

THE HOBBIT Is Go!

2010-10-17T07:49:00.001+13:00

The upcoming two-part production of The Hobbit has at last been given the green light. My buddy Jack over at The Noldor Blog has posted the full press release, which confirms that Sir Peter Jackson will direct the prequel to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy beginning in February 2011. Though it doesn't say so, presumably the filming will take place here in New Zealand. There's still a labor dispute and MGM, the international distributor, is teetering on the brink of the abyss. But the engines of production will soon be firing (with pre-production going on for some time now), and that's good news for everyone in this country.

Playlist: A Meme

2010-10-01T07:40:00.000+13:00

Some time ago--days, weeks, months?--I dreamed that I had seen 0.4 of all movies. Notwithstanding the nonsensical syntax of this revelation, when I awoke I understood the underlying truth of the message, a refrain which had already crossed my lips on numerous occasions in waking reality, upon hearing a friend or acquaintance discuss a particular film: "I've seen part of that."

I don't know why I've seen so many fragments of so many films. Perhaps because I grew up without the early cable channels of Prism and HBO. Perhaps because (for example) one July evening I came home from an auction with my mom--an auction!--just in time for a regular-channel showing of Excalibur--as far as I could tell as fantasia of full-plate armor as reimagined by Bob Ringwood--only to discover, with a disappointment only a pre-teen can muster, that not even Arthur and his knights could defend against my father's annual devotion to the All-Star game. There might be other reasons.

More recently, Brian Sibley tagged me for the following exercise: compile a list of films I would happily watch again and again. Happily, I've managed in the past couple of decades to see a number of films in their entirety, many of them even more than once. Following the tradition of the meme, I'm presenting images from a month's worth of movies. Many are among my favorites, though not all of my favorites are represented, and I've probably missed a bunch, too. 100 points if you name them all.

And now, the rules of the meme:

01. Provide a non-exhaustive list of films you'll happily watch again and again.
02. There is no rule 02.
03. Reprint the rules.
04. Tag three others and ask them to do the same.

Next up: Tom, Brett, and Shawna.

Once Upon a Time in Aotearoa

2010-08-05T15:59:00.003+12:00

It begins with a windmill, a train station, and three gunmen. The windmill turns and creaks without ceasing, as if the wind has at last found its voice after a long search and is reluctant to give it up.

The men await their prey and the train that will bring him. They do not know that he will be their death, nor that these last minutes during which they contend with the elements, and their own boredom, will be their last. They know only that they are at the station to do a job, the kind of job that men like them get sent for: hard men who've lived hard lives in a hard land. They don't know that their quarry, haunted by an encounter with a brutal villainy, is harder still.

At the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West, the audience knows none of these things, either; but as the opening credits unfurl with a languid intensity, surely they must feel they are in the hands of a master.

Once Upon a Time in the West is a big movie, maybe even a great movie. Directed with conviction by Sergio Leone, king of the spaghetti Westerns, it is one for the big screen. I have a copy on DVD, currently in storage somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania, but I've never seen the 1968 film in a theater. Fortunately, the New Zealand International Film Festival, a yearly roadshow affair traveling through the country's major cities, was in town in recent weeks and screening the film at the Embassy Theatre.

The timing couldn't have been better. In recent weeks, preparing for an upcoming project, I had watched Leone's classic Man With No Name trilogy, as well as Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (the basis for A Fistful of Dollars). Now, with Once Upon a Time in the West, I would get to return, if only briefly, to American soil, even if in some ways Leone's vision of America never quite existed.

Moving to another country has a way of messing with your head. It's hard not to constantly compare your new experience with your vast repertoire of facts, expectations, routines. I'm told you tend to spend the better part of your first year abroad looking back on the world you knew.

This process has been incredibly fruitful. While my travels in northern Europe certainly reframed for me questions of identity, ethnicity, and politics, living here in New Zealand has helped me see more clearly those aspects of America I never realized I appreciated. I've never felt stereotypically American--which, for argument's sake, we'll define as "entranced by consumerism"--but now, after engaging in the classic American behavior of taking over a business, I see more clearly than ever the value of vision and the ambition to see it through.

If Americans are brash, impulsive, loud, then New Zealanders tend to be less outspoken about their achievements, credentials, ambition. Subject to a cultural phenomenon known as tall poppy syndrome, which dictates that one not toot one's horn too loudly, they can be downright tightlipped when asked to promote themselves. Such a reticence is tantamount to heresy to American notions of marketing.

I don't know if Kiwis lack ambition. It may simply be that their focus is elsewhere. They are a mobile people, given in many cases to traveling and working and living abroad for at least a year, and this is understandable given their geographic isolation and numbers (4.2 million as compared to the 5.8 million of the greater Philadelphia region). Where America remains a place where much of the world seeks to live, New Zealand is a land whose people yearn to see, if only for a time, the rest of the world.

New Zealand is not a land of Opportunity, perhaps, as America may still be, but one of opportunities for those who are looking. New Zealand is also very young, and perhaps it more closely resembles an earlier postcolonial America, where the influence of its mother country was still strongly felt and the transformation into something other than a pioneering Wild West had yet to fully manifest.

Of course, I could be wrong about all this. After all, I've been here a scant six months.

Towards the end of Leone's epic Western, the mysterious Harmonica (Charles Bronson) enjoins Cheyenne (Jason Robards) and his men to build a train station at Sweetwater, the remote homestead of the late Irishman Brett McBain. Cheyenne figures that McBain had been counting on selling his property, but Harmonica, whose own journey has "something to do with death," corrects him: "You don't sell the dream of a lifetime!" Sweetwater, Harmonica explains, was sitting on the only water in the region, and thus the westward-reaching railroad would have to pass through it, and McBain, or his heirs, would hold the golden key. And so a new station is built, and an outlander's ambition finally realized.

Still At It

2010-07-14T18:05:00.000+12:00

Hi. I haven't forgotten you. The next installment of What I Did and How I Felt About It is . . . on the way. There's no shortage of grist for the mill, nor of Nietzschean life-affirming stressors, some of which may yet prove fit for online consumption. Or not.

Still, goodness abounds. It's hardly a bad thing to eat breakfast in your lounge (Kiwi for "living room") and catch, through the bare wintered limbs of the trees outside the window, and under the pink glow of sunrise, a glimpse of golden waters. Harbor view!

See you soon.

At Last . . . a Doot-doo!

2010-06-07T13:26:00.003+12:00

Through no special effort of our own, Hawk has expressed a decided interest in all the typical male activities: music (especially rock 'n' roll), sports (especially basketball), and girls (especially redheads). But foremost on his mind the past several months, the thing that trumps all other pursuits or objects of awesomeness, is that amazing chariot of freedom, the bicycle. Or, as Hawk puts it, the doot-doo. ("Vroom vroom!")

This past weekend we finally scored Hawk one of his very own, the elusive Wishbone Bike. We'd seen them at all the parks, where he would abscond with the unattended vehicles of other children. We learned that they are "balance bikes" that grow with the child, so that the initial trike can be reconfigured to a two-wheeler, and then finally, when the main bar is reversed, a taller version. An environmentally friendly bike that would last Hawk until he was five or six? I was sold.

Getting one wasn't so easy. A recent newspaper article had extolled their virtues and ensured that the current lot at Burkes Cycles, the only local dealer, was sold out when we arrived for our first attempt at a purchase over a month ago. And that lot was apparently the last to be produced in a house in nearby Lyall Bay, which meant that we had to wait until the new plant in China was up to speed--disappointing on a couple of levels.

The wait was worth it. Hawk with his new doot-doo and bright dinosaur helmet, well, it was like Christmas in June. He's been wearing his helmet all day since he got the bike and has been very reluctant to go to bed each night. He's even woken up in the middle of the night to tell us, "Doot-do, ride." Proud kid, proud parents. Doesn't get much better than this.

(Re: the video. Your volume controls are fine; for some reason there's no sound with the video function on my digital camera. Flip HD is on the way!)

The Mysteries of New Zealand

2010-05-14T11:02:00.001+12:00

Somehow it's already May and we're more than three months into this adventure/project/flight of fancy. For the most part we've made the adjustment with some semblance of grace. The daily operations of our business are now more or less a matter of rote (though much good work remains), our new life without a car remains a refreshing change of pace, and fiery sunrises over Wellington Harbour seem a welcome rule rather than a fleeting exception.

We've learned a thing or two about our new world and also discovered there really is the thing known as culture shock. In our experience it's not the total systemic disruption suggestion by the name, but rather the gradual accumulation of innumerable, seemingly insignificant, differences in ways of thinking, our expectations of native New Zealanders and theirs of us, and run-ins with the uncanny Kiwi approach to solving problems with limited resources.

For example, everything in New Zealand is metered. The minutes on your mobile phone, the gigs you download online, the liters of oxygen you breathe. There is good reason for this, as Everywhere Else Is Very Far Away, and the local population is insufficient, numerically speaking, to produce items in any kind of Quantity.

Add to this the stunning decision, in 1969, by the New Zealand Ministry of Standards, Higher Maths, and Weights of Things to abandon the Imperial system of counting for metrication and you have, for an American brain, a system tantamount to chaos. For, you see, such imposing standards are implemented with a firm irregularity, with the result that you measure (if so inclined) the energy contained in your food not by calories but by kilojoules (whatever they are); your height in the English way of feet and inches; your weight in kilograms . . . or stones -- unless of course, you are determining the mass of a baby, in which case pounds and ounces are your friends.

This same logic dictates that you use a teaspoon for tea but a dessert spoon for dinner, and probably also has something to do with the fact that you'll pay nearly NZ$200 for a pair of Nike basketball shoes circa 1985. Phone numbers are 9 or 10 digits long, with the area codes taking up between 2 and 4 of those digits, and are written in whatever pattern the owner chooses, so you can't rely on the usual mnemonics.

Also, cricket. It's not a Kiwi invention, but still.

Not all of New Zealand's Mysteries are so baffling. In the tradition of British wizardry, the Kiwis have developed a Defence [sic] against Phantom Power, that insidious energy sucker. Every outlet is outfitted with a handy switch that allows you to cut off the flow of electricity and thus prevent the Measurers from squeezing a few more cents out of your monthly power bill.

And then there's the Majestic. Perched atop this tower is a crown of lights (visible in the accompanying photograph). Since we took up residence in our apartment we have made an evening ritual of checking on the color of the lights, which typically go on at sunset. Some nights they are red, others green or blue, still others a flashing sequence of the full ROYGBIV spectrum. As with so many other things here, there seems to be no rhyme or reason, no governing standard, and I suppose that really is part of the charm of this place. You can't be complacent, for things are always changing, and you just might swipe your EFTPOS card the wrong way when purchasing your organic feijoas. Perhaps it's best to take after the little man I imagine is tucked away in his little cell by the Majestic's boiler room, madly pedaling his chromatocycle to power the lights that nightly shine over the city's shimmering waters.

Words By Hawk

2010-04-16T19:22:00.003+12:00

airplane again Amma, Baba, Mimi, Opa (his grandparents) apple baby ball balloon banana bear beef beep bird bite blocks blue book bowl box bug bus button bye calculator chew Dad Derek dog dry dude ear eye fish fire five fly four gifted girl guy hat hello here hi horse hot tea! I know I love you Jack juice knee leaf man me Mom moo more mouth my no nose oh one orange ouch owl pee peek pen plate ride seat shhh shoes sky sky-ball (i.e., the moon) slide snaps snow sock spider stairs star teeth three throw top touch two uh-oh up watch water what? whee! whoa wow wrap yes yup

An Evening at Park Road Post

2010-04-02T18:00:00.001+13:00

Recently I had the privilege of attending the sneak preview of Costa Botes's new documentary, Candyman: The David Klein Story.

Costa, a veteran of the New Zealand film industry, is probably best known in the States for Forgotten Silver, the satire/hoax he co-wrote and co-directed with Peter Jackson (and which largely fooled the New Zealand public), as well as his extensive making-of documentary for The Lord of the Rings (included in the fairly recent special editions of the theatrical-release DVDs).

Candyman I knew less about, only that it had something to do with jelly beans. But I was quite keen, as they say here, to go to an industry event which also had the appeal of being held at Park Road Post.

Sometimes referred to as "Skywalker South," Park Road Post is the premier post-production facility in this neck of the woods, where an increasing number of films is wrapped up, everything from King Kong to Red Cliff to District 9.

The building features a beautiful Arts and Crafts design, but the theater for the screening (I don't know if there are others) depicts what seems a Victorian view of the Near East. The interior is extravagant and a bit kitschy, with frescoes of camels and turbaned traders, but the quality and care taken are so apparent that somehow the overall ambiance is enhanced. Throughout the screening the ceiling's thousands of miniature lights twinkled like the night sky.

The evening's program began with Day Trip, a short directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Zoe McIntosh from a script by Costa about the conflicted aspirations of a Maori gang member. Then came Candyman, an intimate look at the life and inventions of eccentric candymaker David Klein, the man behind the many-flavored Jelly Bellies candy as well as many lesser-known confections. The film explores his sometimes too-generous nature and the collapse of a dream in the face of corporate greed. I hope it finds distribution in the U.S. -- it seems perfectly suited to PBS or other intelligent channels.

After the film I met Costa and we discussed his approach to documentary filmmaking. I found him humble, earnest, genuine, and, like so much of the industry here, encouragingly accessible. Wellington, it's good to be here.

How to Write Your Viking Script

2010-03-27T12:32:00.000+13:00

I'd seen the cardboard standee in the hall of the Reading Cinemas Courtenay, the multiplex in downtown Wellington, and given it no further thought. Then, a phone call from a friend came in, and he, knowing that I'm "mad" about Vikings, revealed that How to Train Your Dragon is about Vikings. Well.

We checked the times, there was a showing in 90 minutes, enough to eat dinner beforehand, and off we went.

I can't say I was expecting much. This was an animated film aimed at children (and perhaps also those adults accompanying them) and the ostensible concept, high though it might be, stated emphatically that the story would be a fantasy.

And it was. However, it was also the most exhilarating and, dare I say, touching feature I've seen in a long time. There's always a magic to seeing a film of which you've had no prior knowledge, no expectation--and when such a film delivers the goods the experience is all the richer. (The music and animation are also superb.)

What's more, How to Train Your Dragon is the best Viking film to date. As a friend of mine (also a screenwriter) likes to put it, Hollywood has been intent on finding and exploiting all the various ways of getting Viking films wrong. This movie found one way to do it well.

Sure, the Vikings speak with Scottish accents, wear their crazy horned helmets, and swing preposterously oversized battle axes. Normally, this would drive me nuts. But in this telling there's also a respect, at a most basic level, for the ethos of the North: of the toughness and sinew forged in an unforgiving environment, the fatalistic humor borne of unremitting hardship, the elegance of the design and craft. Mel Gibson, are you listening?

Here, the adventures of a cerebrotonic Viking lad with a knack for scientific method provide a splendid source of entertainment as well as entry into a realm that's been willfully misunderstood for a thousand years. See it.

Little Miracles

2010-03-22T10:56:00.000+13:00

Some people go their whole lives without having an adventure. -- overheard during last week at my former job

Anything can happen. Anything has happened. There was never a Plan B. No backup, no hedged bets, no second guessing. Just the dream and the path we saw leading to it. One basket holding all our eggs.

The weeks leading up to our eventual settling of the holistic health practice we purchased were nothing short of sublime, a 9-to-1 ratio of beauty to terror. On several occasions it seemed the whole thing might fall through and we would find ourselves without visas, without jobs, without even the ability to legally work, and with only a few short weeks until we left these shores.

We decided we would do the best we could to live well. We visited friends, made new ones, and discovered those new and regular haunts that brought peace and gave shape and rhythm to our days. Several times a week we would take Hawk to the playground at Waitangi Park. Our friend Francisco, a travel photographer, runs the cafe there and proved a source of steady encouragement who never failed to lift our spirits. Situated on the water where Mount Victoria meets Oriental Bay (some of the choicest real estate in Australasia), with a clear view of the green hillside neighborhoods of Kelburn and Karori, the park became our sanctuary. Here, in this spot, we were in New Zealand.

Other aspects of the city played their part, too. The yellow GO Wellington buses bear numerous suggestions for city activities, and if I never GO SMASH A SIX OUT OF THE BASIN, I sure don't mind being encouraged to GO FILM A TRILOGY or GO WIN AN OSCAR. The civic pride is plainly evident here and in the New Zealand Post's Writers and Readers Week, which (among more formal programming) saw the public display--at bus stops, on walls, atop the swing-set of our park--of the finest magnetic poetry generated at installations throughout the city.

We experienced firsthand the kindness of strangers. Just outside the KiwiBank, a gentleman insisted on giving us $30. Unaware of him until that moment, I imagine he overheard our chatterings regarding the annoyingly late arrival of a critical wire transfer. I'd never experienced such open generosity. Sometimes there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Here the common understanding says that between strangers there are only two degrees of separation, not the usual six. This already seems true in my experience, both socially and through our business, though it doesn't hurt having friends in the tourism and hospitality industries. In any case, our roster of local connections has grown rapidly, and for that we're very grateful.

There is a freedom that comes with adventure. Two weeks into our new jobs, we're keenly aware of the responsibilities, as well--to those who work in the collective, to our clients and the broader community, to ourselves. As Jenifer likes to say, now that we've gone through the drama, "We've already done the stupid and impossible, so . . ." And then she laughs. Anything is possible.

Hawk-in-the-Box

2010-03-11T23:02:00.000+13:00

New Digs

2010-02-25T18:08:00.001+13:00

There's something strange about New Zealand houses. Not that they tend to house New Zealanders, but that they typically have neither insulation nor central heating. You might think this doesn't matter, as the country is so far south, and south is hot, and in this would agree with the mistaken English settlers. However, the North Island's climate is sub-tropical, which for the purposes of our discussion means (a) there is little seasonal variation in temperature; and (b) you're likely to wake up in the middle of the summer night freezing your arse off.

We knew about the houses going in to our search for an apartment. Indeed, every one of our Kiwi friends informed us of the cold, hard facts. And if I have been at all American in my comportment during my time here, surely it has been in my scoffing of the situation of the temperature. You can hardly blame me. Last May we arrived in the middle of the worst Wellington winter in 25 years: a bit of rain, some wind, lows in the low 40s. Our first trip nearly three years ago was taken during the equivalent of autumn in the northern hemisphere, and the weather was resplendent.

The apartment, or "flat," we found is the second floor of a Victorian house built in the 1890s. High ceilings, two (inoperable) fireplaces with exquisite tile work, lots of storage, a bigger kitchen than we had before, and a great sense of flow. The other serious contender was a place in Thorndon, a quiet suburb that's home to mostly government workers and apparently a great family area. But it felt too out of the way, disconnected from the culture of the cultural capital of the country, and bit too far a walk from our business.

The flat we took, by contrast, is only a 10-minute walk to work and not much further to the waterfront. It is situated in an urban green belt above a small park, where university students hold occasional chautauquas and the cicadas sound like crackling power lines. We can see the top of Mount Victoria from our living room, as well as the sleek Majestic Centre, the tallest building in the city and seemingly transplanted from the Cloud City skyline.

The street is actually a pedestrian footpath named not out of any nod to literary tradition, but rather to reflect a heretofore unknown labor of the Grail Knight; namely, the carrying over hill and under hill of eight suitcases, three carry-ons, and a car seat up the vertiginous steps to the keep. It suits us well.

Other aspects of Kiwi life take more getting used to. It is well established that New Zealanders, following their English forebears, drive on the wrong side of the road, and that their water goes down the drain in a manner contrary to northern custom. Less well known, and understood, are the rules governing sidewalk etiquette and water usage. Like cars, pedestrians are to take the left side of any thoroughfare. "But," I'm told," that's changing." There's really no telling how you are to navigate through foot traffic. Similarly, the standard for faucets is hot on the right and cold on the left, but that seems to vary from building to building or even sink to sink.

I don't mean to imply that Kiwis are backwards. New Zealanders are proud of their history as a land of backyard inventors, plucky souls who maintain that nothing can't be fixed with a bit of No. 8 wire and some elbow grease. It's nothing short of amazing what has been accomplished here in so little time (since only 1840), and that from years of making do has come a tremendous spirit of can do. This gumption is largely the result of the country's geographic isolation, low population (4.2 million), and youth (making the States seem downright elderly). Perhaps the Englishness has something to do with it, too.

Still, there are those odd moments when, shopping for groceries in the New World Metro, you find in the span of one short aisle--eggs, pet food, condiments, and DVD players, and you, perhaps more American than you'd thought, wonder how anything works at all.

Dispatches from the Outer Rim

2010-02-11T21:45:00.000+13:00

We've crammed a whole lot of livin' in the 11 days since we touched down in Wellington, so here's a run-down of the various points high and low:

1. I want to know what love is. I want you to show me. Actually, I have a pretty good handle on this, thank you, but I must have heard this song no less than four times in the Brentwood on our first day back in New Zealand. Not that I'm complaining, as I'm finding myself curiously attracted to the current spate of pop hits, which curiously remind me of that good old 80s stuff. I got darn near weepy at the New World (the local supermarket) when the Pet Shop Boys' rendition of "Always on My Mind" spilled into the aisles. Something is afoot here.

2. "Do you work for Weta?" I never tire of hearing this question, which for Wellington taxi drivers is apparently the most logical thing to ask Americans here on business. Of course, I explain our particular venture and plans, but that doesn't mean you know.

3. Finding an apartment is harder than you might think. In fact, finding even temporary quarters can be tough when you have to contend with an influx of young people in town for AC/DC or the NZI Sevens (some sort of "rugby tournament" that requires packs of the aforementioned younglings [and some oldsters] to dress like carrots, turtles, flip-flops, or Arabs). But yesterday we prevailed! Our new place is a 10-minute walk from work and not much further to the waterfront.

4. Coffee. Is. So. Good.

5. Good friends make you feel at home. We are keenly aware that we are here for business, have work to do, want to get busy, and are not on holiday. And there are sundry tasks each day to keep us busy and which are necessary to get the ball rolling. But our friends have taken it upon themselves to take us around town and invite us into their homes. We've watched the removal of the mast of King Kong's SS Venture in preparation for its scuttling (which happened a couple of days ago), hiked up to the stately memorial to Prime Minister Massey, dined at Scorching Bay's Scorch-O-Rama (the site of the original Chocolate Fish cafe, which has since been reincarnated elsewhere), and enjoyed the festivities for Waitangi Day, the national holiday celebrating the signing of the Waitangi Treaty between the English settlers and the Maori.

No matter what I've been doing or what's going on, every so often I have this recurring or perhaps multi-part epiphany: I live here. It's a great feeling.

The Interlude

2010-01-31T21:19:00.000+13:00

The other two are passed out on the bed here in our room in the Brentwood in the suburb of Kilbirnie, on our first day in Wellington. It's the third such first day, only this one is for real, the start of something new and unknown and wholly welcomed. We're staying at the Brentwood, a little hotel (by American standards), the only one between downtown Wellington and Miramar, because of a new friend we met through an old one. We arrived like vagabonds, tired and hungry, only to find out, after finding the promised free wi-fi, that a van was already awaiting us.

There have been many such unexpected bits of goodness along this particular way. As anyone who voted for me in the Your Big Break filmmaking competition (or for that matter, simply registered) already knows, I was not one of the five finalists. Disappointing, yes. But for me the entire experience was tremendous, a fun and productive challenge, something I decided to do--had no choice but to do--on top of selling our house and innumerable other tasks. I was pleased with my work--no mean feat--for a contest whose very existence, at this time, seemed providential.

And so I found myself feeling very grateful for the opportunity to share my work, my perspective, my take on what New Zealand means--within the context of an advertising slogan. The anticipation of the results, while wrapping up my corporate work; saying farewells as best I could in a limited time; searching for answers for friends and family; moving in with friends and moving on.

On Wednesday, however, I was not feeling much gratitude when we learned, at the gate in San Francisco, about what I shall lovingly refer to as the passport glitch, and how a year's labor seemed suddenly jeopardized. And yet: the resulting delay, the postponement of our flight, the walk back from G93 . . . all these meant that I was in the perfect time and place in the South Court to meet, and thank, Barrie Osborne, the producer of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings . . . and also Your Big Break. Barrie Osborne. What a gracious man.

The next day, after spending a good part of the afternoon resolving the passport glitch, we wandered around looking for dinner. I had it in my head that Indian was the necessary cuisine (Italian was right out), and so, after inquiring at a nearby hotel, we proceeded past the Transamerica Pyramid in search of a restaurant that with each block seemed less and less likely to exist.

I paused at a corner building. I noticed a plaque that described it as the home of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope studio since 1972. This was interesting, I thought, but then my eye caught another Indian restaurant across the street. Not until Jenifer pointed out, quite rightly, that we were standing at the front door of Cafe Zoetrope, Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant, did I see that maybe we should go in and enjoy some Italian food.

And so we did. I enjoyed the best chicken caesar salad I've ever had, as well as an '07 Pinot Grigio. The previous 24 hours had been a mite stressful. And so we are enjoying the atmosphere, the photographs, the awards, and saying things like Barrie Osborne, when in strolls the Master himself. He moves to the rear of the cafe and disappears from view. Not until we leave do we see him again, sitting alone at an outside table and on the phone. There is no need to interrupt him, of course, but Hawk waves and delivers a bright "Hi!" and Francis waves back. A blessing.

Getting to Wellington has been a journey of persistent groundlessness. Again and again I am reminded that thinking I have some measure of control in the whole affair is rather pointless. You do what you can and then move on. Breathing is also helpful. Every seeming obstacle, every delay, every hysteria-inducing complication has meant that good stuff was on the way. Two unplanned days in San Francisco turned out to be the perfect way to get to New Zealand, right on time.

Further West Than We Thought

2010-01-19T11:22:00.004+13:00

When you step over the borderline of the "known" into the land of the "unknown," you take a risk. But this borderline is so unendingly fruitful, we just say "Okay." We take the risk. — Werner Sobek, architect and engineer

My last week at work I took a back way to the office. There are vast tracts of farmland and woods here, a district impossible according to previous experience and landmarks. The road winds between dell and vale, through hunting grounds and an old graveyard, and I wish I’d known these paths years before, but catch myself, grateful I know them now.

The sun glitters through trees, through the grey and silent world, dumb with frost, and the road finally opens to the back streets of Phoenixville. The bridge at Gay Street has been rebuilt, and it takes me across the Schuylkill to the wide, low skyline. Everything familiar has changed and been reborn in our time here. The old steel city itself, and more recently familiar, everyday haunts: my gym, which closed without notice; my company, which has relocated to a new building. We have sold our house and live in a back room of our friends’ house in Spring City. Everywhere I go, walking through a restaurant, driving through fields, the words rise up in me like a prayer: We are moving to New Zealand.

It is not lost on me that our new quarters are situated on the corner of Wall Street and Park Road, the convergence of material and creative abundance. It’s a fitting wink to the work Jenifer and I have done this past year, to our aspirations and willingness to identify and seek opportunity. I can safely say we had no idea New Zealand would change our lives.

During our first trip three years ago, we quickly fell in love with New Zealand and its people, making lifelong friends and discovering a pioneering culture that offered seemingly unlimited opportunity in our respective fields. Afterwards I came home and (according to reports of dubious origin) stomped around the house muttering, “I want to live in Wellington.” That was a start, setting an intention, but really no way to manifest a new reality. We didn’t know how to make this leap, what mechanisms were needed to click us out of one life and into another.

I made another push towards Los Angeles. But searching for work you don't really want has a way of wearing on you. Hawk's arrival the next year changed everything. His presence, his needs, his potential and my awareness of my role in fostering it led to a serious contemplation of Where I Was and Where I Was Going. After Hawk's name came to us (there is no other way to put it), we learned that, apart from its being derived from the Old Norse word for the bird, as well as a first name, it comes from an ancient Indo-European root that means "to seize." This was wonderfully appropriate for him as well as an ongoing lesson.

Questions arose. About the conditions of my life, what I really want for myself, the life I want to give my son. David Byrne's shrill voice sang in my head, asking: What am I still doing in this house? Why am I still doing this corporate work? And: Why don't I wear autumn colors more often?

At the same time Jenifer, less given to brooding, was searching and finding answers of her own. Last winter (in the northern hemisphere), she discovered a holistic health practice for sale in Wellington. It met every criteria she had established for the kind of business she wanted to run, and in May we returned for a scouting trip. It turned out to be exactly right.

The next six months were jam-packed with a seemingly endless stream of tasks. Filing our application with Immigration New Zealand, which meant writing a business plan and accumulating sufficient evidence as to our Good Character and general Suitability. Preparing our house for market. Selling it.

An odd thing happened during all this. I started getting good at it. Meaning, there was so much to do in any given week (on top of raising a small child and visiting with two sets of grandparents most weekends) precious little time was left for worrying about how I was going to finish everything. Paying bills, running errands, keeping up with the house--all the things Normal People do--now seemed within my everyday capacity. I got less practiced at procrastination. Maybe taking on the opportunity before us was my way of taking responsibility for my life. Maybe I was growing up.

I don't think moving to New Zealand is required for this. For us, however, it's what we needed to integrate our individual and shared dreams, to spend more time together, to live in a harbor city, to create a way of living that's in step with who we'd become while living in and outgrowing a small condo in a small town in Pennsylvania.

As I've shared the news of our plans, responses have been mixed. Some regard us with supportive excitement, others as if we are sailing into the West, to the shores of Valinor. (And perhaps we are, though I promise we’re going by plane.) The most common question is what my family thinks. Our move will be hard on them, no doubt, but I trust that through the distance we will grow closer.

There are many things I will miss. Perhaps most of all will be the sweetness of this time, these last days in the world we've inherited, when we didn't yet know the shape our dreams would take.

Your Big Break: Capturing the Spirit

2010-01-02T12:27:00.004+13:00

As Fate would have it, one of my New Zealand friends alerted me to a spectacular screenwriting and filmmaking opportunity happening right now. It’s the Your Big Break competition sponsored by 100% Pure New Zealand, the travel planning and information site of Tourism New Zealand, and involving good people like Peter Jackson and Barrie Osborne. You may have heard of them before.

In any case, five scripts are selected to be filmed by their writers. One of the top five is determined by popular vote. That’s where you come in!

I’d greatly appreciate your vote for my entry, Capturing the Spirit—that’s my video pitch below. Voting is simple. Check out my entry at http://nzt.strutta.com/entries/10773, vote by clicking the big green button, and . . . you could win a trip to New Zealand! You!

Voting closes at 11:59 AM PST on January 15, 2010.

Thank you for your support! And Happy New Year!

Season's Greetings from Santa and Hawk

2009-12-22T04:25:00.001+13:00

Revelers—Prepare Thyselves!

2009-12-05T09:14:00.002+13:00

Once again in darkest night
Burn hosts of hopes and 'bird so bright.
Gather 'round the glowing embers,
Farewell the year and its December!

The Conductor

2009-12-01T08:21:00.005+13:00

Life is full. Very full. Which is good, very good. Rest assured, dear Readers, that in due time the fullness and the goodness shall be processed and expressed in these pages.

Meanwhile, as they say, Hawk is growing by leaps and bounds and has recently accomplished such feats of derring-do as walking on a balance beam and bouldering (sideways) at a rock-climbing gym (where the minimum age is four, but if Mom’s glance goes elsewhere for a moment you do what you gotta do.) His main preoccupation these days, however, is music. In fact, ever since he was a tiny little guy, Hawk has been crazy about music of almost any kind.

As soon as he hears a tune on the car stereo, the TV, wherever, his index fingers point like little batons, his hands wave to the rhythm as if conducting the whole affair, and his face lights up in a big grin that says, “Hey! It’s music!”

Hawk and I will jam while Jenifer is away somewhere on a secret yoga mission. These sessions may include the African goatskin drum or wooden xylophone he got for his birthday, the shamanic gourd-rattle, or the “jingle box” fashioned out of jingle bells and a container that once held Trader Joe’s chocolate.

Lately he’ll start conducting at the TV and DVD player, our source of CD magic, and this is my signal to put in some Dylan or U2. His other current favorite is mariachi, which he went mad for when a documentary featuring female mariachi players was on TV. In fact, whenever the interview “interrupted” the music, he grew quite angry, indeed. Usually, though, he greets the end of each song with clapping.

It’s too early to tell if he’ll be the next Gustavo Dudamel, but for now he has the requisite wild hair and self-possessed bravado, and (most important) is having a blast.

Cowabunga, Dudes!

2009-10-10T08:37:00.005+13:00

“Dude,” said Hawk. Which is appropriate, I suppose, given his Ninja-Turtley nature when sporting his new quilted vest. That and the surfing theme of “our” yoga studio, ocean earth wind fire, which not only landed in the Top Five of Fox 29’s recent Best of the Philly HOT LIST but is also soon celebrating its 2nd Anniversary Cowabunga Bash Week.

All next week, October 12–18, all kinds of fun events are taking place, beginning with Monday evening’s special class at the John James Audubon Center. For a schedule, go here. It’s hard to believe the studio’s already two and Hawk’s already one. Everyone’s growing up! Dude!

The Best of What’s Around: The Philly HOT LIST

2009-09-05T03:57:00.013+12:00

Over the years, Phoenixville has become the place we go when we want to walk about in an urban setting. Recently, many of the establishments we frequent on the revitalized Bridge Street have been nominated as Best of the Philly HOT LIST sponsored by FOX 29. I'd have you vote for the whole block if I could, but since that option's not available I've provided handy individual links for your use (you do have to register). That goes for my international friends, too.

And make it quick. Voting closes on Friday, September 11.

Artisans Gallery & Café. Long-time readers will recognize Artisans as a frequent locale in these pages. Run by the mother-and-son team of Rosie and Rich Holck, Artisans provides great coffee and light fare in a warm setting festooned with local art. It’s also home to barista and local treasure Joey, who really does have red hair. Vote here.

Black Lab Bistro. The brave restaurant that helped ignite the rebirth of modern Phoenixville. This was our one destination when the town was still on the seedy side. The menu is varied and daring, and will likely satisfy fans of the burger as well as those who favor quail or gnocchi in their dishes. Vote here.

The Colonial Theatre. An old-time movie house and the closest and coolest place to catch indie and foreign fare. Vote here.

Hipster Home. If you aspire to a modern house filled with eclectic housewares, or, for example, prints of French anatomical sketches, this is your stop. Vote here.

Kimberton Whole Foods. A few miles away in historic Kimberton, this is where all the cool kids go for their local, organic, often biodynamic foodstuffs, including grass-fed beef, Fair Trade tea and coffee, and raw milk. You know you want to. Vote here.

ocean earth wind fire. You won’t find a cozier yoga studio in the area, for good reason: it’s also the home of owner/teacher Susan Madden-Cox. Enjoy a variety of restorative and flowing classes taught by excellent teachers, including Jenifer, as well as live music on Friday nights and the occasional fire-pit gathering. Located next to newly founded Balder Park and Iron Hill Brewery. Vote here.

Wolfgang Books. Located atop Hipster Home and reached only by climbing no less than 26 precipitous stairs, Wolfgang Books offers a mix of used and new books, from T.E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and everything in between, in a spacious room with hardwood floors and filled with the haunting scent of old paper. Bonus tip: During Phoenixville’s annual Firebird Festival in December, visit the enclosed porch for the best view of Bridge Street decked out for the holidays. Vote here.

Hawk Is One

2009-09-01T01:10:00.005+12:00

Joy of Mud

2009-08-26T23:40:00.008+12:00

Fleeing District 9

2009-08-18T03:02:00.006+12:00

District 9 is an important, original work. It creates a fully realized alternate reality and is likely one of the best films of the year. Think Children of Men with aliens. Jenifer and I really liked it, at least what we saw of it.

Jenifer lasted about 40 minutes, and I left about 5 minutes later. We don’t usually walk out of movies, mostly because we try to spend our limited moviegoing time on stuff that’s good. And District 9 looked good, and is good.

District 9 is intense. It is stressful. It is not for the faint-hearted, the squeamish, new mothers, or those with Vata out of balance. I don’t know if one’s astrological sign matters.

As with the best fantasy literature, I don’t see movies as escapism. I go to the movies to be moved. To be inspired, uplifted, challenged, provoked, made aware. But we were on a rare date, and a simple cost-benefit analysis had us each realize we didn’t need to spend our limited moviegoing time feeling stressed out. Julie & Julia this was not.

I think we’re most disappointed because we like science fiction, and this is science fiction produced by Pete. We want to know how it ends! I did check with Greg Broadmore, an online buddy and the designer responsible for much of the film’s amazing look, and he
assured me that [SPOILER ALERT] little CJ does in fact survive. [END SPOILER.] So that’s good.

I will probably try again when the film comes to DVD. And I will try not to launch a new movement whose manifesto calls for films free of conflict, tension, and menace, and troublesome things like “thematic elements.”

I will also pay attention to the lady behind the glass. When we went to buy our tickets, she carded us. Maybe she knew something we didn't.

City and Sea

2009-07-30T12:26:00.008+12:00

We’ve been back from our trip for what seems like eons now, the subtle tides of reverse culture shock have long since ebbed, and a few weeks ago I got around to cleaning out the luggage. In my suitcase, in what I believed was an unused pocket, I found a sizeable plastic bag filled with dirt. How long the fine, powdery soil had been there, or where in the world I picked it up, or for what reason, I have no idea. I can only thank my lucky stars the LAX security forces didn’t throw me in a Homeland Security dungeon on charges of bioterrorism. They did take my bag of apples.

In any case, I’ll wrap up the narrative of our trip with some of the highlights of the last week of our stay. Our love of harbor cities demanded that we take a harbor tour, and it turned out that the Museum of Wellington City and Sea offered a particularly appealing program: the Ships and Chips tour.

The tour starts with a brief account of Maori creation myths, then dashes through a selection of the top 101 stories from the 20th century that are relevant to the day’s main attraction. At this point you are whisked outside to catch the vessel that will carry you across the Wellington Harbour to Matiu/Somes Island.

The island’s name reflects modern relations between Maori, the original settlers, and Europeans, or Pakeha: peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, and a prevailing "get it done" attitude. As Matiu, the island had been the site of an important fortified stronghold, or pa. In the 19th century, the island was renamed after Joseph Somes, deputy-governor of the New Zealand Company, and served as a sort of Ellis Island for the unwanted: the diseased, prisoners of war, and individuals guilty of belonging to races or political affiliations suspected of anti-nationalist agendas.

The journey to the island was magnificent. For winter especially, and considering the beginning of our trip, the skies were sunny and the water clear and steady. The white towers of the city’s Central Business District quickly fell away, and within 20 minutes we reached the green island.

We were greeted by Matt, one of the rangers who lives on the island. He escorted our party into a little outbuilding where we got the lay of the land and checked our bags for mice, which have been kept off the island as part of conservation efforts. After Matt’s talk we were free to range the island’s various loops, with the only significant rule being to return in time for the ferry. Before heading off, though, Matt taught us the Maori word for “hawk”: kahu.

After enjoying our boxed lunch of the Kiwi standby, fish and chips, we began a large circle around the perimeter of the island. Soon we were found the cemetery memorializing the quarantined who had perished, and just off the south coast the smaller Leper Island, so called for the Chinese businessman forced to live in a cave for a year until he died not of leprosy but kidney failure. The walk was far from grim, however, as the alien trees and the rocky shores, and the call of the red-crowned parakeets/kakariki provided plenty of satisfying wonderment, even if we didn’t spy the elusive tuatara, a contemporary of the dinosaurs. Atop the island are the conservationists’ buildings, and near the working lighthouse I found a tram track dated to 1866. From that point we could see, across the harbor, the narrow, winding road we’d taken around the Miramar peninsula a number of times, including just the day before.

Our aim was the Chocolate Fish, the popular café in Scorching Bay, Miramar, but we knew that was impossible since the establishment had closed recently under scandalous circumstances. Our friend Jack agreed to take us to its replacement, if only to enjoy the view, and then on a tour around the city’s extensive coastline.

Since New Zealand is so far away as to seem either exotic or an abstraction of time and place, one of the questions I’m asked most, not unreasonably, is “What’s it like?” The simplest answer I can offer, at least of Wellington, is San Francisco with Seattle weather. The domestic architecture is a mixture of Victorian and modern, and in the countryside or along the shores you are likely to find sprinklings of weather-beaten bachs (pronounced “batches”)—little huts that serve as summer homes and vacation getaways.

As we drove through these little seaside villages, we looked out for blue penguins and shags and took in Jack’s engaging commentary. At one point we reached the end of the road and the awesome slope of Red Rocks. The landscape was impressive as it was, but it didn’t hurt to learn that it had doubled as the site where Frodo and Sam hid from a troop of Haradrim in the shadow of the Black Gate. In every sense of the word, this place is fantastic.

The Soul of Wit

2009-07-01T11:41:00.002+12:00

My mother-in-law says my blog “has too many words.” She laughed in telling me this, realizing that words are, after all, the chief currency of most blogs. She just wanted to see some photos from our most recent trip to New Zealand. Later, it occurred to me that her assessment may have been directed not so much at the blog but its author instead.

The other day I went out for my usual meditation at the Quaker meeting house near the office. As I was about to take my seat on the front porch, I saw that two men were cleaning and painting a newly installed fence by the road. They belonged to Millennium Restoration, the outfit that had recently applied the same treatment to the fence bordering the graveyard. Wanting to preserve my privacy, I kept walking. I also noticed, in the field across the street, a clearing filled with stones arranged in a familiar, winding pattern.

One of the men, seeing my new intent, pointed to the rings of stone.

“What is that?” Millennium asked.

“A meditation labyrinth,” I answered. Deep creases formed on his brow.

“What?”

“A meditation labyrinth,” I repeated.

“A . . . lab-inth? What’s that?”

At this point a competent rhetorician, or a rational adult human, upon sizing up his audience, would give the shortest possible answer so as to make good his escape. I wish I could tell you this is what happened. Alas, herewith did I launch into a telling of the tale of Theseus and the Minotaur.

Fortunately, I managed to detect that the glint in the man’s eye was not rapture but rather the light of the burning sun under which he was toiling. So I quickly swerved into a line about needing to clear my mind and get away from the office for a few moments. He griped good-naturedly about the heat, but I pointed out, trying to be helpful, that at least he got to spend his time outdoors.

I took my leave and Millennium bid me “good luck.” I found this a potentially ominous thing to say, for what divine assistance would I require in traversing a path on which one cannot get lost? I reached the labyrinth, and just then a red-tailed hawk screeched and took flight from its perch high above the trees shading the cemetery. (Amazingly, this would happen again in exactly the same way later in the week.) I took this as a countering good sign.

I proceeded to wend my way through the labyrinth. And just as I reached the center and a suitable degree of “no mind,” a jarring sound from the outer world penetrated my consciousness.

“AFLACK!”

It was Millennium. I didn’t look up from the stones, only smiled at the well-meaning intrusion. And reminded myself not to tell him, on my journey back, about that poor fellow named Yorick.

(And all this to say: trip pictures are up! Enjoy.)

Captain Hawk: World Traveler

2009-06-17T00:57:00.004+12:00

There’s more to come on our trip, but unexpected gadgetological troubles and the rebalancing of circadian rhythms means y’all’ll have to stand by for a bit. (The promised ethnographic study, “Kiwis and Their Attitudes toward Housing,” is forthcoming.) However, if you’re anything like my workmates, you want to know how Hawk did on the flights.

When people meet Hawk and witness his uncannily sunny disposition, they’re quick to say, “He’s such a good baby!” And of course he is, as all babies are good. But what they typically mean by “good” is “convenient and easy,” which, though we aim to keep these ideas separate, he certainly is. The flights were pleasant, if lengthy, non-events for the lad, with the added bonus of not requiring his least favorite accoutrement, the dreaded car seat.

One of the highlights of the trip, for me, was simply the privilege of being together with Hawk. I haven’t spent so much continuous time with him since he was born. As any parent knows, watching your child grow and develop is an immense source of joy and satisfaction, and here I felt I was privy to things I’d been missing during work hours. When he wakes, Hawk tends to bless us with his sweet, drowsy whisperings, though one morning he sat up and boldly and clearly proclaimed, “Garg.” He learned how to crawl up stairs, taught himself how to work a light switch, and one of the big thrills each day was pressing elevator and crosswalk buttons. He also worked on standing up without support, a skill he practiced by bouncing on the bed. By the time of our (10-hour) layover in LAX on the way back, he had done it several times, sans bouncing, from the floor of lovely Gate 8.

A friend of mine, who doesn’t have children, once suggested Jenifer and I get all our traveling in before having a kid. But I wouldn’t trade this time with Hawk for anything. Just as we’ve discovered that visiting other cultures teaches you more about your own, traveling as a family outside the usual day-to-day restrictions, in my experience, opens you up to a deeper sense of who you are and what you want in life. It's also great fun.

Mount Victoria and the Lungs of the City

2009-06-12T11:39:00.005+12:00

Yesterday I had a few hours to myself as Jenifer and Hawk visited some new friends, so I decided to spook around the neighborhood of Mount Victoria to enjoy the architecture and view. Turning left onto Hawker Street, however, I saw a sign for the lookout atop the mountain, so I abandoned my plan and followed the trail up the street past the orange-brick cathedral and monastery of Saint Gerard's, and continued up the wooded path into the bush. The slopes were steep and slippery from the off-and-on rain, but within 15 minutes I emerged from the green to the mountain's top. I'd passed the spot where Frodo and his Shire buds got off the road and suddenly came face to face with a very new and very flash public restroom. I crossed the street and a quick jaunt up an improvised trail took me to the highest point in the city.

The view is panoramic and reveals just how green the city is. Ironically, the only original bush left is that in the botanic gardens, but you can still appreciate the city planners' vision in creating a town belt that would bring oxygen to the growing class of workers for the Industrial Age. A surprise rainbow added a perfect, if unnecessary, final touch to the view.

We leave for the States this evening, so I'll add a few more posts, as well as pics, after we get back.

In God's Golden Bowl

2009-06-09T18:22:00.006+12:00

A million years ago, before the last Ice Age, we visited Nelson. I do endeavor to provide timely accounts of Where We Went and What We Ate, but time is nothing if not elastic when you're traveling, and is probably not best spent in youth-hostel Internet caves, especially when you're in New Zealand.

To this preface, however, I will add its epilogue, the account of precisely how we made our way to Nelson, which is to say that we nearly did not. The night before our Monday-morning flight, we decided to program the alarm on my new watch, a reward for 10 years of service at the day job. It was titanium and Danish, so no complaints there, but we did discover at this late hour, after perusing the instruction booklet we had so thoughtfully packed, that its "crown" could not, indeed, be extended to the third position, let alone the second. I would need to acquire an alarm clock if were were to awake in time for the flight.

And so I ventured across the oceanic breadth of Wakefield Street to the New World, which by New Zealand standards is a pretty good-sized supermarket. That I did this without any navigational devices, and possessing scanty star lore, without being struck by an automobile was a significant accomplishment. In the end, however, it would take three such sojourns to acquire the sought-after device and the 1.5V aka AA battery that powers it.

The "Abstract Art Swivel Alarm Clock" is a masterwork of Chinese design. You can tell its worth right from the box alone, which features the following instructions in no less than eight (8) different languages:

1. Removing the Battery Cover.
2. Inserting the Battery.
3. Setting the Time.
4. Setting the Alarm Time.
5. Using the Gerund.

Step 2 was my particular favorite, as the battery found its final resting place not because the slot was consciously designed to house it, but by a considerable application of will on my part. I won, but this meant the onset of a peculiar "click-clack" that would haunt me the rest of the night. Despite my lack of faith, the instrument performed its function, and early the next morning we were on our way back to Nelson.

The flight from Wellington to Nelson, across the Cook Strait, comprises probably the best 25 minutes in the air you will find anywhere in the world. We were treated to a glowing sunrise over snow-capped mountains, oceans of cloud, and that distinctive gemlike water. We had traveled once the other direction, taking the ferry from Picton; this mode of travel is equally majestic if rougher on those who haven't yet gained their sea legs.

When you land in Nelson's little airport, you are greeted by a flat plain encompassed by a far, long ridge of mountains whose distant strength is hard to capture on film. Once in the town itself, you find yourself enclosed by steep, verdant hills, long intersecting triangles of folded green in dappled golden light. The land here is reassuring, and you feel you have a solid place on the earth, as if you are given definition by its otherness.

We met with Kimberly and Cathy at the former's retreat in the section of Nelson called the Maitai Valley. The meeting was to be a yoga workshop of sorts, a reunion of those Jenifer had taught two years ago, but it was the Queen's Birthday, after all, and short notice meant a more intimate gathering would be had. After lunch in town, at the Morrison Street Cafe, we returned to the valley, and I stepped out to take some photographs and take in the view. It seemed I had stepped onto the set of The Last Samurai, even if that film was shot on the North Island. Just behind the retreat center was a small, sloped pasture, and I counted myself lucky to meet the likes of Zoe the goat and two horses, one brown, one white. How could you not grow as wise as they, living on the side of such a mountain?

Not all talk was yoga-talk, however; Jenifer, Hawk, and I also spent our share of time enjoying the view from Kimberly's spectacular and surprising Art Deco house. From the so-called Centre of New Zealand, which we had hike to last time, the house appeared an orange rectangle lodged squarely in the middle of a mountain. Up close, its color was terra cotta, its design boldly and aerodynamically Art Deco. It fit its environment quite suitably, and though Kimberly and her husband, both Americans, couldn't be more grounded, such a dwelling might well be considered "flash" even in avant-garde Nelson, home of healers and seekers. The architecture of New Zealand offers up some surprising secrets about the culture; I'll try to comment on these next post.

Jenifer and I also connected with Elayne, a massage therapist, and her husband Mark, a woodworker who specializes in Native American flutes. We had gone to Elayne for treatments on the recommendation of a mutual friend, and, as so often seems to be the case here, soon found ourselves invited over for dinner.

The flight "home" to Wellington the next morning was just as terrific as its predecessor, and it seemed we even brought a bit of Nelson's golden weather back with us . . .

Weekend in Waikanae

2009-06-04T11:51:00.009+12:00

I was going to post this entry yesterday, but Fortune stepped in and allowed us to catch the last showing of Star Trek at Wellington's Embassy Theatre. Good thing, too, because it seemed best to see how "The Future Begins" before discovering how "The End Begins" with the premiere of Terminator Salvation.

Yesterday was largely a regrouping day after returning from sunny Nelson on the top of the South Island. I'll get to our stay there next time, but first let's go back to our weekend in Waikanae. Through a mutual friend we met in Nelson two years ago, Jenifer connected earlier in the year with Melissa Billington, an American expat who teaches "Myoga" at her Powa Centre in downtown Wellington (and also on TVNZ's Good Morning show). As luck would have it, she was running a teacher-training workshop in Waikanae, about an hour north of Wellington on the North Island's west coast, and we were invited to go along.

The drive up was fairly unspectacular if you were somehow able to become bored with the steep hills, dense bush, and glistening blue-green water; or if, through a sizable act of will, you had overcome your fear of hurtling down the wrong side of the road, perched to the left of the driver as if dangling like the gyroscoping gun turret mounted on the far side of a B-wing fighter.

In any event, we safely reached our destination, a lush and serene place far from the road known as Saddle Creek Farm. As we crept along the winding dirt path, a massive black-tailed rabbit sauntered across the lane, taking all the time in the world and offering our whirring hrududu no regard whatsoever. He had dealt with our kind before.

The retreat building itself was a rustic wood cabin topped with the fairly commonplace corrugated steel roof that suggested a shantytown in Nairobi, Mumbai, or Johannesburg. Yet the scenery gave a far different impression, of a rugged land worked by rugged individuals who don't seem to mind the isolation of the bush or, indeed, of their tiny island nation.

Dinner that night, as all the weekend's meals, was prepared by a feisty Italian woman named Pia. The food was hot and excellent, an Italian/macrobiotic blend that was far heartier than I could have expected. Breakfast the next morning, however, would not be served until after a two-hour yoga practice that began at 5:30. Those familiar with my metabolism will know that this prospect was not encouraging, but somehow I found my center and enjoyed an excellent practice led by Melissa, and survived to tell the tale.

After breakfast, Hawk and I ventured into the wild. Along the way we met a strange goose with a green face and a box-like body. His "shoulders" were pointed and his honk sounded like an old-time motor car's; he was strange yet still familiar, as if from a world turned sideways, and typical of the fauna to be found on this fair green isle.

Further down the road we came upon a tiny white chapel set on a slope set before a tall sheep's grazing ridge. We had learned that this little building was actually the painting studio of the farm's owners. It seemed the perfect place for contemplation.

We returned from our tramp, content in having bolstered our man points; for we were the only males in a workshop full of women. The setting would have been perfect for who knows what manner of moon dancing, witchcraft, and Cosmo quizzes ("How to Tell If He Really Loves Your Dosha!"), but in truth the discussions (at least the ones I was privy to) centered around the science of Ayurveda and the Vedic moral precepts known as the Namas and Niyamas, as outlined by B.K.S. Iyengar in his book Light on Yoga.

I alway find that such getaways, when enjoyed in the company of new friends, tend to seem longer than they really are. But the darkness of Sunday evening rolled around soon enough, and we were on our way back to Wellington, for a brief interlude at our familiar room at the YHA, before an early-morning flight to the South Island, to Nelson, and to familiar faces.

Coffee and Friends

2009-05-31T19:44:00.008+12:00

We're back in Wellington for a night after a weekend yoga retreat in Waikanae. More on that next time around; tomorrow morning we return to Nelson for a couple days, so I want to catch up on last week's doings before we accumulate this week's.

Highlights included a busy Thursday catching up with a couple of friends. First up was Jack Machiela, who had led an excellent Lord of the Rings tour we had a taken a few days into our first visit to Wellington. We met for coffee at Mr. Bun's All-Day Breakfast, a short walk from the YHA down Courtenay Place to Taranaki. We enjoyed our drinks and discourse on all things cultural, political, social. Jack caught himself at "ranting" (his word) once or twice, exhibiting the same passion he displayed for the movie trilogy and the tourism industry, but this was exactly the kind of trail magic we'd been so fortunate to find on all our trips. It's not every day you can catch up with someone from your journeys and not miss a beat.

Lunch was Caffe L'Affare with writer/director Jonathan King (sorry, Jack!) and his wife Rebecca. Jonathan was newly home again after a stint at the Cannes Film Festival to secure international distribution for his recently completed second film, Under the Mountain. His trip home made our series of flights look like child's play, but he seemed energized from the experience; soon enough he would be heading out on the more demanding promotional side of the equation, which is where we caught him last time. We talked shop, of course, but the key takeaway was my introduction to the Trim Bongo. Ryan Rasmussen's Prohibition had already been lifted earlier in the trip, and I'd just had a Long Black with Jack, but this was a tiny little shot of a drink taken purely for pleasure, and I course I had to relent. (Keep in mind that Wellington has more coffee shops per square foot than NYC.) Jonathan did a fair American accent in capturing our general "if a little bit is good, even more must be better!" approach to consumption.

Later, I was lucky enough to join Jack again for a trip to Miramar to visit the recently opened Weta Cave. I'd been debating whether to make the effort since I'd already toured Weta Workshop itself. Jack's friend Mark, previously a bookseller and one of the first to carry Weta's Lord of the Rings products before the storm hit, would be interviewing for a position in the Cave, which is part shop, part museum. Arriving half an hour early meant an occasion for more coffee, of course, and it was here that I drew my line and went for the decaf Long Black. On the way, we ran into Weta designer Greg Broadmore and new-business coordinator Linda Hughes. Once again, everything seems wonderfully integrated here, and it seems hard to go anywhere without meeting someone tied to the film industry. And this is not a bad thing.

Of Wind and Water

2009-05-26T17:29:00.009+12:00

We knew our stay in New Zealand would correspond with winter, but apparently the winter weather has arrived early this year, and winter weather in Wellington means cold and wet. One of our contacts had congratulated me on my bravery in choosing this time of year, but I secretly scoffed at what I took the Kiwi definition of cold to mean. I've lived in Pennsylvania all my life, and Pennsylvania gets snow and temperatures below freezing, and sometimes below zero, and once I'd run in minus-30-degree weather and my eyeballs darn near froze, so I thought I knew something about a lack of appreciable heat.

The thing about a Wellington winter, however, is that wind and water are added to the mix. In fact, I suspect that the city engineers, following the progressive model of the YHA Wellington City (the youth hostel at which we're initially staying) and its eco-friendly showerheads, have taken it upon themselves to conserve the region's water resources by aerating the atmosphere itself, with the result that it doesn't rain, which would involve the typical downward movement of precipitation, but spritz. The local meteorologists, to my knowledge, do not use this term, which is misleadingly docile, though yesterday The Dominion Post did proclaim, at the top of page 1: "A particularly foul, miserable and revolting weekend."

This would lead one to believe that the locals themselves find the climate disagreeable, and sure enough there is complaining to be heard if you are alert to it. And yet I have seen more runners and cyclists "braving" these elements in attire that would be more suitable for a Pennsylvania summer, which is to say very hot and very humid. I'm not sure what the deal is.

In any case, I don't mean to suggest that I am complaining, it's just that I'm still in the throes of jetlag and therefore occupied, perhaps more than usual, with minutiae. I've also noticed, however (and approvingly), the city's new fleet of taxis, neon-green Prii, cruising the streets. There are other cool things to report, as well, such as the nearby Central Fire Station, which looks like a perfect Legoland version of Art Deco; the scores of white-painted Victorian homes nestled in the green hillside of Mount Victoria; the charming cable car that's been running up the side of Mount Cook to the suburb of Kelburn since 1902 (and which took us up to a restaurant and bar named Red Tomatoes, with surprisingly good pizza); and, of course, the brilliant aquamarine water of the harbor. No, there is a quite a lot to love here, and we've still only scratched the surface.

Return to the Land of Tomorrow

2009-05-22T13:20:00.003+12:00

Tomorrow Jenifer and I head back to New Zealand for three weeks. Joining us for his first flight will be Master Hawk, as he was dubbed by the airline. We look forward to taking some much-needed time off, catching up with our friends, and seeing what we can see.

As usual, I shall endeavor to report our antics, though the accompanying photographs may not appear until after our return. See you on the other side!

Bridgeport: Tales from the Park City

2009-05-20T12:17:00.004+12:00

Opportunities multiply as they are seized. — Sun Tzu

Good news: friend and frequent Holy Embers commenter Eric Lehman has a new book out. His first published book, Bridgeport: Tales from the Park City is a collection of stories about the adventurous, even heroic, characters that helped bring their small Connecticut town to prominence in the 19th century. A few chapters in, however, and it’s apparent that Eric’s written not a cultural history of Bridgeport but of the country as a whole: a history of America in miniature.

The book, available here, is an engaging, entertaining account of figures grand (P.T. Barnum) and small (General Tom Thumb). I’ll leave you with the end of the book’s prologue, a fitting summary of the initiative and ingenuity which marked Bridgeport during its golden era and for which America became famous.

. . .

[The Marquis de] Lafayette did not foresee it, but this small town would become a center of creative industry and would one day evolve to be the largest city in Connecticut. Its people would watch the sea and take to the sky. Its inventors would transform the fields of metalwork, sewing and dental hygiene. There would be famous colonels and famous cartoonists. Two of its citizens would go on to become the most popular entertainers of the nineteenth century. Thousands of others would help America win both World Wars. But first, those people needed a little elbow room. Twelve years after the famous hero of the Revolution passed through Bridgeport, the townsfolk asked for a charter from the state of Connecticut. They would become their own city at last, and live proudly in the inspired vanguard of the possible.

Sunday Afternoon

2009-05-13T23:32:00.004+12:00

UPDATE May 19: Hawk is indeed growing! As of Monday he measures 29 1/4 inches and weighs 16 pounds, 12 ounces. Big boy! Oh, and he likes apples but not bananas. And cheese. He loves at least five kinds of cheese, including Havarti. Cucumbers are good, too, and carrots. And we mustn't forget the green beans.

Elizabeth Gilbert on Genius

2009-04-24T06:58:00.002+12:00

There was going to be a great big picture of Elizabeth Gilbert you could click and then you could watch this really cool video right from my blog, but the picture was too big and spread out beyond the borders of my blog’s template, threatening to invade my profile and best of list and quite possibly even the charming municipality of Lower Pottsgrove, and I’m fussy about such things. Also, Creative Commons says I’m not allowed to modify these TEDTalks from TED.com (not me personally, but all of us). So, to watch this really cool video directly on TED.com, you’ll just have to click here instead. Yeah.

Visiting The Visitor

2009-03-29T12:11:00.003+13:00

Saturday is Yoga Day, which means that I take Jenifer's Sweet & Slow class and someone takes Hawk for a walk about Phoenixville. Last Saturday, however, no grandparents were present for the Hawk Walk, so I wrapped the wee bairn on my chest for a stroll around town, planned some shots for the documentary (more on that later), and then settled in at Artisans. Here, in ordering my non-decaffeinated tea (Rooibos!), I had the good fortune to strike up a good and lasting conversation with the fellow next to me in line. This elegant African-American man was taken aback, in a good way, by this "Euro male" using an indigenous technology to transport his son.

Within minutes our conversation had expanded to cover our travels, heritage, the borrowing of tribal face paint in a spring fashion collection from a designer on the Iberian Peninsula, and the Mythopoetic Men's Movement. At some point we veered into our respective work, and I mentioned that I was considering attending a talk by actor/writer/director Tom McCarthy at Penn the following week.

It so happens that my friend works at Penn, near the Kelly Writers House where the event would be staged, and we arranged to meet beforehand.

Part of the aforementioned "considering" involved the fact that I typically don't go into Philadelphia more than a few times a year, a training excursion last fall being a rare and notable exception. It's not that I don't like the city (though I confess to grumbling about its dreariness, which Jenifer claims is my invention) but that I don't particularly like driving in/into/out of it.

In any case, on Wednesday afternoon I begin my journey. Soon I am motoring along the Schuylkill Express, a narrow strip of tar betwixt river and rock. It helps to imagine yourself doing a trench run on the Death Star, because that would be more fun and less stressful. If ever there was need for a monorail (or flying cars!), this would be it.

A roadside accident ensures my late arrival, but soon enough I'm past the mess and looking for the South Street exit. A well-placed sign, however, tells me the exit is gone, not there, destroyed by the Empire. It appears the bridge is out.

I phone my friend. He picks up and advises me to take the 30th Street exit. I do this, or do it as much as I can while remaining a dozen stuck cars back from the sign. I continue and, per his advice, check in every so often to update him on my progress.

I ring him again and tell him I've reached 30th Street. "Good," he says, "here's what you're going to do." His next bit of advice staggers me: "Now you will stop the car and ask someone on the street for the directions." What?!

I disregard this advice, not out of macho pride (as I later relate to him), but out of something else, whatever the opposite of macho pride must be. There is nowhere to stop, and cars are behind me, and the pedestrians are scattered and likely to regard my panicked look as indicative of something other than idle bemusement. No, I will not stop the car on 30th Street.

(I should point out that this portion of the trip was improved considerably by its being next to the train station, a monumental monolith so mindblowingly massive it recalls Jim Burns's vision of the Temple of St. Alia-of-the-Knife in Frank Herbert's Eye. I didn't know modern-day earth people made buildings this large.)

The rest of the drive goes without incident, as I orient myself on the grid that is the city's layout (a big shout-out to Ben Franklin here) and arrive safely in the parking garage. Soon I am in my friend's office, where he shares with me a sampling of the inspiring community outreach work he conducts for the university, and then we are off to the event. As we walk across the quad, my friend tells me that someone using the pedestrian portion of the South Street bridge apparently had the misfortune of putting their foot through it, and thence was it deemed in need of repair.

My friend drops me off at the Kelly Writers House, a really cool cottage, and I find a seat way up front, as the room is packed with Penn students. Within minutes Tom McCarthy is introduced by Penn's Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve, writing instructor, novelist, and writing partner of John Leguizamo.

Like most of the industry folks I've met, Tom is humble and witty, and his talk is a fun account of his journey as a writer and director, and how his training as an actor informs his writing. He's probably best-known for writing and directing a pair of critically acclaimed indie hits, The Station Agent and last year's The Visitor, starring Richard Jensen. I do not admit to being behind in my Netflix queue, but I am able to follow along all the same, and especially appreciate the anecdotes about the hilarious notes he's received from development executives.

I ask Tom about his writing process and whether he actually has a discernible method. He describes it as something like this:

You're going along and you think maybe you've missed your exit. But you're not quite sure and so you put on some speed, looking for it, looking for it, and then you finally acknowledge that in fact you did miss your exit and you have to go all the way back to the beginning and start over.

Hmm. Perhaps that is as good a method as any: create a plan, set out when you feel the time is right, anticipate the inevitable roadside construction, and keep on trucking. And don't get out of the car.

On Emptiness and Form: The New Blog Entry by Ryan Rasmussen

2009-03-17T14:55:00.011+13:00

It is a time of moderation in every thing. Moderation of enthusiasm keeps you balanced. Moderation of despair deepens your understanding.

— From the I Ching, Hexagram Li/The Clinging, Fire; second changing line

I try to live a saintly life. Sure, some might call me stiff-necked, others insufferable, but in truth I aim to do good work, do right by others, and eat all my vegetables. Good, clean livin’. I have never believed in the myth of the suffering artist, but these days, with a plate filled to overflowing, I accept that adversity and limits are necessary if we are to truly realize ourselves.

And so. I allow that if there is a vice in the repertoire, it might be coffee. Lately, it seems that caffeine doesn’t agree with me. I think I have been clear on my fondness for the black gold. True, I am not one to guzzle a pot of truck-stop java; indeed, I scoff—scoff—at the day-old carafe lingering on the burner at Wawa, and at work I proudly avoid the company joe. But most days I enjoy a sizeable cup or two of my special extra-strength home brew.

I suspect that normally this intake would not pose a problem, as indeed it didn’t for many moons; but coupled with a number of other pressing matters, responsibilities, obligations, duties, challenges, projects, expeditions, and the odd bit of administrivia, the effects of 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine on my beloved adrenals have been unpleasantly pronounced.

And, so, being reasonable—and striving for saintliness—I give up the stuff. Just like that.

I know.

Now, I did have a cup of coffee last Sunday, and a little green tea on Tuesday, and then a bit more on Wednesday, but apart from that, I have been free of caffeine for going on three months. It just seemed best not to short out the ol’ nervous system.

In the subsequent study of non-caffeinated teas, I found one featuring kava, an herb native to Oceania and the South Pacific, suitable for relieving stress and claiming to “set your mind free.” I thought I might have found something, but my Anthroposophic doctor (this appellation being neither a critique nor a bid for acclaim, but rather added merely for color, as the sort of thing one might say at a cocktail party to the right company) insists that I desist from imbibing this particular beverage if I want to avoid damage to my liver. Heck, if I wanted that I’d take up alcohol in earnest. That would be the writerly thing to do.

In this way I was reduced one day last week to a morning ritual of Lipton decaf tea, the kind you get in a little packet trumpeting 105 mg of antioxidants. Doubts quickly surfaced, however: who knows what sorts of multinationalistic pesticides were also lurking within the teabag, or what poor broken-backed native had to schlep burlap sacks of this stuff up and down the jagged ridges of the Andes? Fair Trade, shade grown, and biodynamic this stuff was not. My mind was certainly not at ease.

It’s possible what I miss most about coffee is the elaborate ritual involved in preparing the ebon brew. How better to prepare for, or forestall, an evening writing session than to take the trouble (an interesting choice of words) to prepare 16 ounces of presspot coffee to the most exacting standards?

At last year’s Austin Film Festival, I consulted Lawrence Kasdan on the matter of burning the candle at both ends. After all, he had been a father, and in marketing, before he got the call from Spielberg. Lawrence recommended that I take a break from writing. A break! What could he possibly know of the writing life? I mean, really.

Later, however, I recalled the sabbatical Hesse took from writing Siddhartha (how does one write of enlightenment without having achieved it?), which doesn’t give much comfort if your goals are no less lofty and you aim to produce something greater and with a better title than The Anxious Viking. When at long last you discover, perhaps to your dismay, that your main character is you, then the heavy digging begins and you find your opening into a darker yet richer world, an unearthing of deep roots that have always been there but are not so easily won.

If all this comes off as complaint, I apologize. There are considerable bright spots to report, after all. My meditation practice is stronger than ever, the Kid I mentor in the gym has set new personal bests in both the bench press and leg press, and somehow I’m close to ripped these days.

Then there’s the glowing performance review at work, the documentary on which I’ve begun pre-production, and Jenifer’s blossoming yoga classes. Hawk, of course, continues to delight and amaze. In the past couple of weeks, he’s begun scooting; and just a few days ago he’s taken his already considerable trilling technique to the next level. (I have no doubt he will prove an apt pupil when the time comes for learning all the requisite sound effects for ray guns, dinosaurs, and alien cyborgs.) His bright, sunny nature is undeniable and wonderfully inescapable. When I am in his orbit I needn’t remember what it is to be so perfectly present, for he is blissfully unaware of time and cause and effect, and beautiful, and amazed at the gift of embodiment, and I remember to just breathe, just breathe, Ryan, and my heart is full once again.

Hawk at Six Months

2009-03-02T09:30:00.012+13:00

Peekaboo Hawk.

Yeah!

From right: High, Just-as-High, and Third.

With Mimi and Opa.

Attack-Face Baby!

Baby Trumpet!

A Few Honest Words

2009-02-25T03:33:00.003+13:00

Every so often you come across something so staggeringly new and exciting that you feel compelled to run into the streets and spread the news. Fortunately, a blog also will work.

There we were, enjoying a perfectly nice pajama day, watching PBS as we are wont to do, when On Canvas comes on and this young fellow appears, in Philadelphia’s First Unitarian Church, and he’s singing in the clearest of voices and not playing so much as exercising his cello in the most unconventional and pleasing manner. His music is a refreshing hodge podge of bluegrass, folk, and jazz. His name is Ben Sollee and he will be well known one day.

Reduction In Force

2009-02-05T14:01:00.003+13:00

This morning, while enjoying a much-needed vacation, I learned of my company’s imminent RIF. I wish I could say that Corporate saw fit to sponsor a Reading Is Fundamental program, but the truth, as the title gives away, is closer to a disturbance in the energy field that surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.

I learned from the VP I report to that my direct report had been let go. Later, while depositing checks at the credit union whose software our company creates, I ran into my former manager. He, too, was gone.

Now, more than ever, I am grateful for this work which allows me to support my family, travel the world, and develop my ability to write stories worthy of the screen. It is no small thing.

While I was spared in this reduction in force, none of us is spared the uncertainty of these or any other times. It is a hard thing to see friends and colleagues, journeymen and veterans alike, face sudden challenges that were not of their own devising. To them, to the rest of my fellow workmates, and to those unknown brothers and sisters bravely facing the logic of the bottom line, my prayer is that each of you will come through this period a little stronger, a little wiser, and be the bearer and creator of new opportunities and meaningful work.

Faraway

2009-01-17T17:12:00.004+13:00

Andrew Newell Wyeth

1917 - 2009

Season's Greetings from Santa and Hawk

2008-12-24T13:55:00.002+13:00

Feeding the Fire

2008-12-17T13:06:00.005+13:00

Saturday night the Firebird went up again, gloriously, as several thousand moderns gathered ‘round, transfixed by its healing spell. As I swayed from foot to foot, a sleeping Hawk under my coat and wrapped against my chest, I heard someone behind me say, somewhat obviously, “I feel like a savage performing an ancient ritual.” Fortunately, this casual comment failed to incite a reaction from the fundamentalist forces of antagonism that earlier in the evening—or so I’d heard while waiting in line at Artisans for my three-shot Americano—had protested the glorious event for its purportedly pagan character. I wondered whether Christmas trees occupy a place of honor in the living rooms of these latter-day crusaders.

It’s rare these days to witness, much less participate in, any kind of public ceremony that doesn’t involve spectator sports. Indeed, in an age where commonality with your fellow person is most likely to be sought and found in one of your neighborhood’s three Wal-Mart Superstores, a civic event like the Phoenixville Firebird Festival is positively magical in its ability to draw so many in.

Unlike those odd family heirlooms of behavior wherein the original intent is lost and/or willfully forgotten and your Christmas Day feast consists almost entirely of cold cuts on potato rolls and you persist in perpetuating this behavior because you’ve persisted thusly since 1971, the Firebird Festival was founded with a grounding in myth and a memory of decades of local economic decline. Also, people like burning things.

Jenifer laughed at her own childlike glee when, after the morning’s class, she described the day as her favorite of the year. This time we were even more excited than usual simply because it would be Hawk’s first time ex utero. We would also be contributing to the town’s rebirth in our own small way by working a table promoting our friend’s yoga studio.

We set up shop in the lobby of the Colonial Theatre, a smaller version of similar turn-of-the-last-century movie houses such as the Embassy Theatre in Wellington or the Paramount Theatre in Austin. We situated ourselves by an olde-tyme Santa sleigh and a restored Wurlitzer organ and got down to the business of selling yoga, which boiled down to answering children’s queries about the contents of the festive little holiday-themed boxes occupying our table. The answer was “yoga” or, what amounted to the same thing, “nothing,” since the boxes were intended to deliver gift certificates or class cards. Oddly, none of the children was satisfied by our answers, though more than one attempted to cart off a box all the same.

On the off chance I’d have some free time, I took my notebook and conjured a plot point concerning medieval European politics. With all the yoga talk and ancillary burrito eating, however, I didn’t get around to catching up on a primary source I’d chanced upon in a used bookstore in East Stroudsburg (home, incidentally, to the Frank Frazetta museum, which may well be the objective of a future field trip—I’ll keep you posted). I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, since Hawk, 15 weeks old and already a precocious flirt, was bound to be the major attraction.

As the burning time approached, we packed away our gear and headed down to the site. The streets were filled with people eagerly awaiting the countdown and soon enough the sky was filled with smoke from wood saturated from the week’s heavy rainfall. Within minutes flames licked the mighty Phoenix and the intentions of thousands soared heavenward.

Afterwards we followed the flow back up Bridge Street, walking back to Jess’s house for her “Pyro Postlude.” For the first time in recent memory, we found ourselves at a genuine party filled with interesting people our own age. Jenifer and I certainly had no idea what we’d find when we moved to the area from a university town, and it took us some time to get our bearings and discover the awesomeness lurking beneath the surface. Usually, however, this awesomeness found expression in folks a decade or three our elder. And now, on Firebird Day, another layer of Phoenixville opened to us.

Later, I walked to retrieve the car to spare Hawk the cold. The streets were mostly empty now, but the lights still shone with yuletide cheer. I scraped ice from the glass, then circled by the fire site to see the remnants of the blaze. The fire was still going, now surrounded by a small circle of stalwarts. I imagined our friend Henrik, chief Bird Builder, was among them, and envied these few in this moment. I smiled, though, too, for I have had my share of fire-talk; and I thought to myself, or maybe I said it aloud, “There’s good medicine.” It takes only a few, or perhaps not even that many, to change the world.

Firebird Is Coming

2008-12-09T15:58:00.002+13:00

A friend of mine, a small-business owner, insists the world is burning. And it is, I suppose, what with the economy and all, but then the world is always burning, one way or another.

Here at Holy Embers we like the glow of fire, especially the sea of flame that welcomes you at dawn, as the red sky did this morning. But my favorite fire is that of the burning bird at Phoenixville’s Firebird Festival. The fifth installment of this annual community ritual happens this Saturday, December 13. If you’re local, or even if you’re not, head on over and join those who have helped pull a failing steel town from the ashes and forge it anew. You can find the schedule of events here. (Note to friend: it's free.)

Austin Powers: The Once and Future Festival

2008-11-26T13:07:00.008+13:00

Passion makes the old medicine new:
Passion cuts the veins of weariness.
Passion is the elixir that renews:
How can there be weariness
When passion is present?
Oh, don’t sigh heavily from fatigue:
Seek passion, seek passion, seek passion!
— Rumi

Passionately address yourself to work that matters.
— Shane Black

And so we begin again. I’ve debated as to whether to dive right in, act as if nothing’s changed, no time has passed, just keep on trucking; or whether I should, you know, offer up a little meta-bloggery, discuss the approach we might take, the point of entry that would make the most sense. Perhaps you have a feeling about which way I’m leaning, perhaps not, but let’s just say that I’m glad to be here, blogging, and feeling good.

I spent several days recently taking the R5 into Philadelphia for a training course to bolster up skills demanded by the day job. It was not something I was altogether eager to submit to, as the event seemed perniciously corporate; but early on something changed, something probably inside my head, and the effort required to get there (including a longer-than-usual commute just to reach the station) made the whole venture seem worthwhile. I was out of my element in terms of schedule, location, routine; could not rely on the standard patterns; and oddly I found myself on something like an adventure.

Traveling along the Main Line, we rumbled past the spacious backyards of upper-middle-class suburbia, picking up elegantly dressed businesspeople at one stop after another: Wayne, Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Villanova. As the train drew closer to center city, you could actually witness the “progress” of socioeconomic degradation (but I’ll allow that downtown Philly is not the heart of darkness I once fancied it). Free from the responsibility of driving and the usual workplace demands, and without Jenifer and Hawk’s company, my thoughts often turned to my writing projects and the writers’ conference of the Austin Film Festival I’d attended what was now already some weeks ago.

I felt I was in a time of measured progress, at best; a restaging, one of those necessary interludes between full-bore efforts. For weeks I’d been struggling with time itself, the feeling of chronic jetlag, and a sense of toil without end. Even the I Ching’s counsel was bleak: “You have been wounded by dark forces.” This is not to suggest that I was unhappy, only to observe that a creature of routine finding himself without routine may be prone, at times, to fretting. And as Austin rolled around this creature also found himself without a new script in hand to tout, push, and sell; without a recent accolade or attaboy to trumpet; without anything, really, at all.

This proved to be perfect.

I took Jenifer’s suggestion to go without an agenda, to not concern myself with the unfinished state of my current script. This freed me to pitch the spate of new projects that had arrived unbidden in my noggin. It was both comforting and exhilarating to see a future beyond the historical epic, and I saw that even if I didn’t generate another idea I could easily have work for the next decade.

Austin was different this year, too. There was something richer about it, and I am not alone among my peers in expressing this. Perhaps we are in a different place now as writers, perhaps more receptive or just plain ready for the roof to blow off so the party can begin. The panel discussions seemed elevated, or perhaps the crowd, like us, had simply gotten older and there was an accretion of experience and skill and ambition and talent so that the whole beast of the conference was free to delve into the nitty gritty of writing and getting your writing turned into flickering images for others to clamor into a theater to view. I don’t remember, for example, repeated questions about what genres are hot and what are the studios looking for and should I write a spec that’s Hostel meets Wedding Crashers?

The overall thrust, from the writers generating content to the producers shepherding it and the actors embodying it, was that you need to write what you need to write. Concern yourself not with calculating the kind of spec that’s supposed to make a sale or garner assignment work—as if you could really ascertain this anyway. Trust that your own method, as wicked and flawed and weird as it might seem, will suffice—and is closer to that of the pros than to anything gleaned from books. To this end, Terry Rossio shared his inspiring theory of targeting, which boils down to writing beyond your current capacities. I know my heart swelled when Lawrence Kasdan, who knows something about screenwriting, said:

“The thing you must write is what will get you through.”

It’s going to be really cool to see what’s in theaters five to 10 years from now.

Sure, there was the occasional disappointment, such as the discovery that Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York would not be playing until Tuesday. I can’t remember when I was so excited to see a movie about a figure of speech. And, of course, the damn thing always starts later than I expect it to on Thursday (in the words of Rhino the fanboy hamster: “Let it begin!”). But on the whole the conference felt supportive, at times maybe even triumphant.

At registration, a young man, a kid, was signing up for the pitch competition. I don’t even remember whether he asked for my advice. Maybe I just let him have it, which isn’t really my style, but I was excited for him to be on his first outing and let him know that the event had been really good for Tom and me. He had no idea what he was in for—how could he?—and that was all the more reason to go for it. In that moment I felt like a seasoned veteran, and envied him a little bit, and neither is a bad thing when it comes to affirming yourself as a writer.

These moments happen all the time in Austin. They are a large part of the conference’s value. Another key takeaway is that you meet people who are more like you, in the ways that matter, than most of the folks in your ordinary life back home. You are now a card-carrying member of a scattered tribe, not the only one ensorceled by the stories of the silver screen.

When two such word-warriors meet, a common element of the introduction is “How many times have you been to Austin?”—this being the screenwriter’s arch equivalent of “How much ya bench?” In other words, beneath the posturing and angling (for there is that, too): How serious are you? That’s another question Austin will ask you. Are you doing everything you need to do? Are you letting go of those things you don’t?

My answer to the first question, five so far, includes an oddball ringer and a touch of the primordial. My first time in Austin was so long ago I hadn’t even started screenwriting. Not really, anyway. In fact, I wasn’t even supposed to go.

A graduate student at the time, I’d had a paper accepted at the Society of Literature and Science, some fantastic Foucaultian thing linking cyberpunk, constitutional psychology, and 1930s bodybuilding. (I know, right?) I had already signed on to pack into a van and haul off to Atlanta for the conference when a friend of mine, a Ph.D. candidate in Communications, invited me to attend Austin instead. I was torn between what seemed like obligation and what seemed to hold a spark of destiny. It was one of the few times I have felt with a deep bodily knowledge that I was standing at a turning point in my life.

Until that point, I hadn’t acted on the dream that had started all those years ago with The Empire Strikes Back. That was the film where I first understood that films are made and before that written. In college I spent many hours standing in the stacks of the library reading journals of film criticism and books of Pauline Kael’s collected reviews, as if even sitting in a carrel would signify too much of a commitment. This was as close to screenwriting and filmmaking as I could allow myself to get, when my overriding obligation was to get a solid education in a reasonable discipline, when the university’s self-defined major in film meant cobbling together a courseload and the road to downtown Pittsburgh seemed much too far a trip for someone without a car, an understanding of bus schedules, or the time to squander on extracurricular pursuits whose end was something other than a corporate job with benefits.

Perhaps this explains why my memories of my first Austin are fragmentary:

In a warehouse listening to the soundtrack to Apollo 13 before the feature began, some film starring Denis Leary, Joe Mantegna, and Annabella Sciorra that, to my knowledge, never attained a wide release.

Pitching the late writer/producer Michael Piller on two-thirds of a script cobbled together in three weeks. He saw through our hasty effort but never hesitated to take us seriously.

Geena Davis iceskating furiously. That guy from Hack being really evil in a barn. Windmill. Water torture.

Ah, yes. The Long Kiss Goodnight. This film wasn’t part of the festival program in 1996, at least I don’t think it was. Now why exactly my friends and I would drive out to some suburban cineplex to catch a movie we could easily see back in State College or any other semi-populous district I have no idea. Even less clear to me is why I would preface this viewing with the alcohol-and-caffeine cocktail of a Shiner Bock (imbibed at the excellent but now defunct Gilligan’s restaurant) and a 32-ounce Diet Coke. Unaware that its writer, Shane Black himself, was probably already holed up in the Driskill lounge and beginning what would become his near-annual chautauqua, I got up no less than six times to pee during what felt like a very long night, indeed. Mr. Black, my apologies.

Clearly, we didn’t do the conference right. We had no rhythm. No preparation. We made no connections. Still, the conference made me feel like a writer and, more important, became the known thing I would return to when I was ready.

Let me put it plainly. My decision to attend the Austin Film Festival changed my life.

. . . . .

Saturday night, the last night of the conference, finds our posse down Brazos at a large pool hall that could only be found in a college town, or maybe only one in Texas, I don’t know. Tom is delightfully drunk, and he and I are getting schooled on the green felt field by our newfound friend Tim, a Los Angeleno by way of Chicago. Someone approaches me. The kid from registration. He wanted me to know, he says, that he’d won the pitch competition. He just wanted me to know.

He is proud, we shake hands, and I remember the intoxicating feeling of victory, but also more than that, much more: the tangible sense that you are moving forward, that others are seeing you, and that you have both the capacity and the responsibility to passionately address yourself to more than a Driskill cheeseburger.

The kid’s name, by the way, is Nick Hurwitch. I have no idea what will happen to him, how he will answer Austin’s questions, and whether he will ever return. But he was here, as my friends and I were, and perhaps he, like us, saw greatness sitting in the director’s chairs at the head of the Driskill Ballroom and felt that maybe, just maybe, there was greatness waiting for him, too.

“You have to have this thing that will not be extinguished.”
— Lawrence Kasdan

Whole Wheat Is Not Whole Grain*

2008-11-23T14:05:00.002+13:00

It most certainly is not, and nowhere is this grave truth more hilarious than in Bolt, Disney’s new animated feature. Bolt is the first movie Jenifer and I have seen in the theater since Hawk’s arrival (and it took a village to engineer the outing). Neither of us had particularly high expectations going in, but we’d seen the trailer for months and just had to see the hamster. Fortunately, it turns out that “Rhino” — an exuberant fanboy who lands the dream job of the canine hero’s AWESOME! sidekick — is not the tale’s sole source of comedy. The pigeons throughout the story steal scene after scene; watch in particular for the writing partners Bolt encounters upon reaching Los Angeles, easily the best part of the film’s unexpected Hollywood satire.

*This is not actually the next post. Consider this a stopgap, interstitial tissue, the mezzanine, if you will, betwixt “The Blessing” and the forthcoming “Austin Powers.”

The Blessing

2008-10-27T13:30:00.013+13:00

A voice in the dark: “Ryan.” Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. The bedroom is lit with the eerie glow of the new alarm clock/radio’s blue LED, the sort of light cast by the TV that’s left on by grandmoms when they can’t sleep, only without the flickering.

“Ryan.” There it is again, that voice. Jenifer’s voice. I leap out of bed—which you can do when it’s only eight inches off the floor—and into action. The heartrate soars, adrenaline courses, the klaxons are blaring—DIVE! DIVE!—and I am the personification of power and puissance, I am a ninja, I am the wind, and I am fumbling with epic mightiness to fix a sock on Hawk’s flailing foot—and then Jenifer’s voice cuts in again and points out in no uncertain terms that my efforts are “strictly tertiary concerns” (I apparently having vaulted right over those of the primary and secondary orders) and that my attention is needed on the more immediate and urgent task of changing the wee bairn’s diaper.

Yes, of course, I answer, perhaps not in those words. I’m not sure, really, what I say, only I brave the beacon of Mínas Morgul (so I have come to call the ever-watchful blue LED; and, yes, I know in the movie it’s green) and haul baby Hawk into the bathroom for another stint at natural infant hygiene, otherwise known as “elimination communication”; for Jenifer has developed (and I to a lesser extent) the ability to detect his waste elimination needs almost before he does. Sometimes we miss (hence the diaper), but more often than not we anticipate in time and thus enjoy Hawk’s happy attention rather than his unhappy wrath. This, as you can imagine, is exhausting.

And I wonder why I find myself already a week out from the final day of the Screenwriters’ Conference of the Austin Film Festival. The conference was the first time I was away from little Hawk since his birth eight weeks (already!) before. During the summer Jenifer and I had decided that the conference would be sufficiently far away in time that my going would not be an issue; in fact, Jenifer insisted I go.

For weeks the trip loomed large in my imagination as I looked forward to the epic anchor point of the year, the screenwriter’s New Year; and if my departure was less grand than that of Húrin son of Thúrin, or of Hector’s taking leave of Andromache, each famously dandling their sons on the eve of their doom, then my return home was a triumph neither of those heroes could lay claim to. I had survived the foreign campaign unscathed and returned to hearth and home restored by the effort. During the conference, Hawk was never far from my thoughts, but upon seeing him again I was completely surprised by how overcome with emotion I was. How had he grown so much in only five days’ time? What had I missed? What new superpowers had he manifested? I felt reborn from four days of paneling and partying, but nothing could compare with Hawk’s evident transformation and the incessant march of his metabolism.

I had returned to the new world, the one without order or plan, the one that demanded an abandoning of expectation and preference for structure and predictability. In this world, as I have suggested, things tend to take longer to accomplish and at times risk not being done at all. So it was with our planning for Hawk’s baby blessing.

Jenifer and I had struggled to come up with a location and format for the event. When asked what a baby blessing was, I’d joke that it was a christening without the Christ, but really what we were after was a gathering of our closest friends and family that was reverent but not overly programmed. We felt that it should have a sense of ritual about it, should be led by a qualified facilitator; we didn’t want to just wing it. Here Hawk would be officially introduced to our community and we wanted to get it right.

Jenifer’s father joked that, knowing us, we’d enlist an East African shaman to conduct the ceremony. I wish I’d been there to see the look on his face when Jenifer reported that our first choice was, in fact, Malidoma Patrice Somé, noted shaman and elder of the Dagara tribe of West Africa. Unfortunately, his schedule was booked.

On to Plan B: The Great Quentini, a local performance artist known for his unconventional drum kits (fashioned from junkyard scraps), irreverent but heartfelt spoken-word pieces (on the importance of chlorophyll), and genius for unusual hats (carved from foam). But he, too, was unavailable.

I mentioned our dilemma to my local men’s group and one of the guys suggested we require everyone to bring their own blessing. YES! We would have everyone else shoulder the load. Perfect!

That left the location to find. We wanted an outdoor site and had originally dreamed of holding the event atop the nearby Hawk Mountain for obvious reasons, but with October you never know what kind of weather you’re going to get and we had mobility concerns to take into consideration for a couple of our guests. For a time the leading contender was Wayne’s Woods (named for General “Mad Anthony” Wayne) in the Valley Forge National Historical Park, but here there was no guarantee of freedom from crowds.

In the end we held the blessing at ocean earth wind fire, the yoga studio where Jenifer works and our home base in Phoenixville. Jenifer and Hawk and I took our place in the backyard and the gathered joined in an effortless circle. My mother started to Jenifer’s left, presenting a cross-stitch wall hanging announcing Hawk’s birthday, and then each member of the circle in turn presented his or her gift to Hawk. Each gift beautifully bespoke the giver’s individual talents: testaments, artwork, performance, poems both original and carefully chosen.

Just as the city sounds penetrated our patch of greenspace, we made no effort to block out the external world or the public atmosphere of failures and bailouts, the sense of crisis in the air. The world has always been ending, but with such folk as were gathered about us it will always begin anew. These extraordinary people, our community, had witnessed and supported our growth as we pursued our callings, and now Hawk had heard the call. Perhaps Tom, in identifying what was required of each of us, put it most simply: “Never be afraid to be great.”

Afterwards Hawk’s two families spent the remainder of the afternoon at Chanticleer Garden, followed by dinner in downtown Wayne. The day had been perfect, the weather beautiful, and finally the time came for our families to part ways. Jenifer and I decide to take “the back way,” as we often do, and here that means a passage through Valley Forge Park. But Hawk’s cries of hunger mean that we have to stop for a feeding, and Jenifer and I smile at each other as we recognize that the only stopping place is the great Arch. This stone monument is one of my favorite places, a sanctuary.

We are alone, the three of us, at this sacred spot. I think of it as the spiritual epicenter of the land, where General Washington and his men braved the harshest of winters during the Revolutionary War. At the edge of the field are the darkening trees of Wayne’s Woods, and as I collect photos Jenifer and Hawk remain at the Arch under the silent watch of the deer and a burning sky.

Darkness falls and Hawk finishes. Only it isn’t dark, not entirely. We get in the car and, guided by moon and stars, find our way home.

There Will Be Blog

2008-10-23T14:54:00.002+13:00

Oh, yes, there will be, once I figure out the new non-routine. There are indeed events, happenings, and occurrences, not to mention incidents and perhaps even affairs, all requiring reportage and perspectivizing and nostalgianating, including Hawk's baby blessing and the annual sojourn to Texas for the Austin Film Festival, by which I really mean the Screenwriters' Conference. Please do stand by.

There Can Be Only One

2008-10-06T09:24:00.003+13:00

Potato Eaters

2008-10-02T16:02:00.006+13:00

Each night at dinner, in lieu of grace,
my mother lit the center candle
on the table. We children
were allowed two fingers of wine
from the icy jug that was kept cold
out on the front porch. The seven of us
shared bread and casserole on our full plates
and the light filled the room with luster.
Each of us had a task: clear the dishes,
wipe the table, snuff out
the half-melted candle,
its smoky trail reaching to the ceiling
like fingers folding into prayer.

When the washer was full,
we'd stand by the sink, my mother and I,
her hands plunged into the soapy water,
mine holding a dish towel,
removing the dripping pans from the drainer,
and wiping the water away, to expose the shine.
We'd stand there in the evening hour
quietly perfecting every keepsake minute.

Later in life, I stand in class, by the desk
in front of students as we discuss short fiction,
plunging into emerging themes.
A daughter and mother in one story
bathe together in a tub infused
with herbs and barks;
the same characters travel to market
to gather bread, butter, and fish
to prepare together later.
The mother preserves the daughter's childhood
in a trunk: plaid dresses and yellowed blankets,
mementos aired out and refolded again.

In capital letters I write ritual,
chalk powdering the folds of my slacks. Together
we learn that these acts are connective tissue that bind
our muscle to bone. Though pages away,
miles, or even years, we, as characters
break bread, fold hands into each other's,
light the light that will unblind us.

—"Ritual" by Amy Nawrocki

Heads up, Emberlings! I have news not of culinary practices and the cultures in which they manifest, but of a book, and a book of poems at that. I'm delighted to announce the publication of Potato Eaters by Amy Nawrocki. Amy, a friend of mine and wife of frequent Embers commenter Eric, has been attracting a good deal of attention for her deeply felt work. Potato Eaters is Amy's first book and the result of a number of years of diligent craft. Writers, you know what this takes.

Potato Eaters will be available in early November and is available for pre-order from Finishing Line Press.

P.S. This just in! Congratulations, too, to Phoenixville's own Ocean Earth Wind Fire, sanctuary for yoga, massage & whole living, which celebrates its first anniversary!

Summer's End

2008-09-22T06:19:00.003+12:00

I was going to title this entry "Back in the Saddle" or "The Receptive," but this morning there was an autumn chill in the air, and Jenifer and Hawk are off for the first of the fall teacher training sessions. Leaving me home to . . . write.

Several days ago a friend asked how the writing was going. The good news is that already the new family routine allows plenty of time for it. Sure, there are moments when it feels like (to me alone of the trio, no doubt) that I've stumbled headlong into a set designed by Spielberg, wherein the toy train is steaming around the bend, all the appliances are flashing and screaming, and that sinister toy monkey is clapping his cymbals. At me.

But such moments are fleeting interruptions to the general slowing down and steady and simple being that a baby brings. This past week has been more of a ramping up to writing, a melange of software configuration, file management, and getting used to the idea and process of regularly plugging away on a story. You see, shortly before Hawk arrived the laptop picked up a nasty virus that shut down production. Having seen their van ambling along the interstate, I called the, uh, Geek Squad for assistance. This was on a Sunday. The "double agent," whose accent revealed that he was from very much elsewhere on the North American continent, eh, informed me that the earliest appointment for a house call would be on Friday. I took it, thinking all the while that this was entirely unsatisfactory. But another buddy suggested I take up the cause with the boys at Circuit City's Fire Dog, and lo! I was able to haul in the computer that very evening. With any luck, the guy said, it'd be ready as early as Tuesday. Boy, was I set.

I'll spare you the agony of the next two weeks, saying only that after at least a half a dozen trips out to Circuit City and probably twice as many phone calls I was once more in possession of the laptop and all of my files. It seems Brad--how great is that?--had had trouble locating not only the correct driver but also the gumption required to complete the job. Rarely have I witnessed such a fine display of incompetence.

The net result, of course, is that I was out of action for a full month, and that has turned out to be nothing short of necessary, as something inside me told me it would. Sometimes the Universe conspires to slow you down and you pay attention and give thanks to the evening chirping of the cicadas and the fiery sunsets and the dark hours after, and you, with head clear and fire stoked, are once again ready to enter a new and willing season.

The Vigil

2008-09-10T09:00:00.009+12:00

Hawk is somehow already 10 days old, and yesterday was the first that felt easy. Most of those days I've not known with any certainty what time it was at any given moment. I've spent it looking at Hawk, and after him, and I couldn't be happier. When Hawk is in the state known as quiet alertness, surveying our faces and the environment, gathering intelligence, his features sometimes assume a severity we call Samurai Face. And then just as quickly he'll blink those grand E.T. blinks, suggesting unfathomable depths of wisdom, and I find myself gazing upon a Star Child. He also does a mean impression of the late great James Brown, if James Brown did T'ai Chi.

I'd known, of course, that Everything Would Change, as Everyone Was Happy to Point Out, but I didn't understand the absolute focus required, nay demanded. As the leader of a local La Leche League group explained, unlike other projects or campaigns or aspirations, such as taking a new job, your life for a time is full of upheaval and uncertainty, but then eventually you adjust to the new demands, the new life, and reestablish a sort of equilibrium. With a kid, that doesn't appear to happen. The world changes, you change, and you keep on changing. The old life truly has passed away and a new one begun.

For me, it started on Friday, August 29 at three in the morning. I woke, sensing that Jenifer was no longer in bed. I found her downstairs on her knees in front of her favorite chair, a loveseat, where she had been stationed since 1:30. She told me that she didn't need me yet, to go back to bed until the usual hour. I complied as best I could, though for half that time my stomach was in knots. Hawk was on his way.

We spent most of the next 24 hours in front of the chair, Jenifer on hands and knees, my hands pressing on her sacrum each time a contraction came on. Over the course of the day Jenifer was only able to eat a few pineapple slices and a bit of toast. From time to time she would get up and walk around a bit, or get into the bath, but otherwise she maintained a single position. Hours passed, sometimes without words between us. The house was still, as if waiting with us and sharing this deep peace. Together we waited, moment by moment, and Jenifer endured. I could only liken the process, however feebly, to heavy squatting. When you are doing 20-rep squats with close to twice your bodyweight on the bar, and anything else at all seems a happier option, you can pace yourself to some degree, rationalize the effort put forth, make deals with yourself to get through the discomfort. Labor, of course, differs in that you don't know how many "reps" you have to do, you can't decide to wimp out and cut the set short, and your success or failure has no impact whatsoever on anyone else. Otherwise, Jenifer agreed, the two are completely the same.

The water broke, finally, at midnight. By this point we had moved to our new bed, which is low to the ground in the Japanese style. We felt that Hawk's birth was just around the corner. The contractions grew stronger and Jenifer's vocalizations, like a galdr chant, grew fiercer as she climbed the upper reaches of the intensity spectrum. Afterwards, Jenifer said "I didn't think I was a screamer." We half-expected the captains of the condo association to call the cops on us.

But no one came and neither did Hawk. Though nothing seemed amiss, both of us entertained thoughts of moving to Plan B. Jenifer's labor was fast approaching 24 hours. How long was too long? It's not like you could consult a monitor that indicated 83% completion. I remember quipping, "Most things get harder before they get easier," and, at last, just as Jenifer reached the ends of her endurance, the head appeared.

Jenifer felt it before I saw it. And then, with a final push, Hawk flew out and into my hands. I passed him to Jenifer and we pushed into the bathroom. Jenifer bathed Hawk and herself by candlelight, birthed the placenta easily. The first thing Jenifer noticed was that Hawk has my ears, and then his long feet, and only then his sex. Back in the bedroom, we weighed (7 pounds, 14 ounces) and measured (21 3/4 inches) him, but mostly we just looked at him. Here he was, at long last, the realization of our union and of generations going back beyond the reach of thought or memory. Hawk was born in the bed he sleeps in, and that morning we slept in it together for the first time.

To say that Hawk is a revelation is a vast understatement. Days before his birth I'd dreamed of him, of his size, his brown hair, the way his features are a mixture of Jenifer's and mine. In the photos I'd taken chronicling Jenifer's pregnancy, now Hawk also is present; before he was only an idea, an abstraction, an it even, for we had undergone no testing, no diagnostics, no ultrasounds. We knew nothing of his size, shape, sex (to say nothing of his gender), but already we understood something of his personality, or at least his energy. Throughout the pregnancy there was an abiding sense of rightness for Jenifer, and so we chose not to question this and subject it to the analytics of the Rational. On Hawk's fourth day we visited the hospital to see a lactation consultant. The place had the flowery stench of a funeral home, and we knew that within the panoptic walls of this institution Jenifer could not have had the birth she, or Hawk, needed.

I'd also dreamed recently of the daughter of a friend of ours, a rare, beautiful child who knew from an early age what she wanted to be, a dancer. She has just started college, for dance. In the dream, she was backstage preparing for her performance, unaware of being watched, just being effortlessly herself. The dream took me back to the day before Jenifer went into labor, when I was at the company picnic and my table was engaged in a conversation about kids going off to college with reasonable majors to get reasonable jobs. Better not to put all of one's eggs in one basket was the prevailing wisdom, and I nodded and smiled at my colleagues while inside I vowed never to succumb to this line of reasoning. And how could I? How can we expect our children to follow their dreams if we have not only forgotten but willfully buried our own? The question most often asked of Jenifer — "What if something goes wrong?" — was just another version of the one directed by my corporate compadres at me — "What if you never make it?"

A few days after Hawk's arrival, a friend who knows something about swinging for the fences wrote me about living a vigilant life that will inspire my son. In pursuing my own dreams, in helping Hawk to discover and achieve his own, would I be able to say that I am happy in this life, happy that he has joined it? I need not ponder this long, for I already have an answer. These 10 days have been the sweetest of my life. Hawk already has taken me out of myself, down a long, winding road where there is no past, no future, only this demand, this need, this moment. Hawk, I promise you, I am happy. Let's take the road together.

A Boy Named Hawk

2008-09-01T04:59:00.006+12:00

Introducing Hawk Octavian Parker Rasmussen.

Born Saturday, August 30 at 1:30 AM.

Full report to come.

40 Weeks

2008-08-28T01:05:00.003+12:00

[Insert pic here, Fire Dog willing.]

Note: We are grateful so many of you share our excitement for the baby's arrival! As we approach the big day, whenever it comes, we ask that you please refrain from calling or e-mailing for news. You can be sure it will be posted here. Thank you!

100

2008-08-21T03:53:00.005+12:00

I had this entry nearly in the can when our laptop contracted a particularly virulent virus, and thus I am posting through extremely non-standard means and under the most trying of conditions. Fortunately, no pedaling is involved. However, I can’t help but feel like I’m sending these words from a distant star. As soon as the ‘puter is back from the shop, you can be sure I will include a few quasi-Sebaldian illustrations.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is: Welcome, and thank you for joining me on this, the 100th entry on Holy Embers. It’s hard to believe there are already so many, and harder still to judge the correct approach for the occasion. Do I go for the epic or the intimate? Do I take this opportunity to catalogue the Austerities of Ryan Rasmussen, or review the Top 100 Films I’ve Seen Part Of, or . . . ?

It’s a strange thing, this blogging. Unless you’re treating it as an out-and-out diary, there will naturally be items left out, hidden, squirreled away for an auspicious moment, to say nothing of sidestepping the risk of prematurely giving voice to those victories along the way. But perhaps this is as good a time as any to share a confession: I am not the only Ryan Rasmussen out there.

My crack blogitorial team has looked into the situation and discovered that there are in fact 99 other Ryan Rasmussens on the Internet. Let me be clear: I am not from Chicago nor do I bill myself as “the world’s greatest salesman.” I am also pretty sure that we are not a secret subset of the Templars (or at least I haven’t been invited). Nonetheless, whatever charms I offer up in these pages have been sufficient to garner me the title of Number Two Ryan Rasmussen on the Internet. (For a time I actually wore the Yellow Jersey myself, but the Chicagoan swiped it while I was touring New Zealand. You can’t be too careful.)

I am well aware of the responsibility this carries. After all, these pages have been visited by individuals from no less than six continents. True, they sometimes come searching for clarity on matters such as the “purple bag along 422,” but others are on a quest for something more profound, for insights of a more philosophical nature, pondering “what can the strongest man not hold forever” and “what is the function of finland.” I would like to think I have provided something of an answer from time to time. (Of course, my great aunt once told me that my writing was “philosophical,” but I don’t think she was worried about Finland.)

When I began this blog I didn’t know what I was getting into, or that I would enjoy it so much. In fact, it was only a few months ago that I realized I have a bona fide hobby. Sure, it supports the screenwriting, but it’s also become something else, a focal point for making sense of the journey. And this entry, I suppose, is really a roundabout way of acknowledging that you could have chosen to visit any of the other Ryan Rasmussens on the Web, but you didn’t. Thanks for stopping by.

In gratitude,

“knight in training ryan rasmussen”

38 Weeks

2008-08-14T11:41:00.003+12:00

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

2008-08-11T11:40:00.004+12:00

Soil for legs
Axe for hands
Flower for eyes
Bird for ears
Mushroom for nose
Smile for mouth
Songs for lungs
Sweat for skin
Wind for mind
— Just Enough by Nanao Sakaki

The days are strange. Their shape matches that of prior days, the responsibilities known and commonplace, but these days are marked by an unfamiliar waiting-but-not-waiting, and filled with an eagerness to meet the new person in Jenifer’s belly. They herald the end of one era and the beginning of another. I will not be the same.

The day job has been intense, unremitting, and there I am told repeatedly to enjoy all the sleep I’m supposedly enjoying at the moment; my take is that I’ve been training for the sleeplessness that is to come. Dreams of editing newsletters three days in the past week are not encouraging, especially when there is no possibility of a holiday. The evening job has been no less intense, unremitting, and there I tell myself repeatedly not to be so hard on myself as I head into the second half of the current draft.

The real work, of course, is taking place in the ever-growing Pod that houses the nascent visitor soon to join the party. But not too soon. As Wing Commander of the Mobile Pod Defense Forces, my mission objective demands that I deflect all well-meaning but misguided attacks (such as the classic “How is she?” — the special intonation and accompanying hand-wringing reserved for the infirm and those perishing of consumption), wherever possible establishing a high-energy perimeter and employing whatever verbal throws and locks are required to squeeze the well-wishers from “Any day now!” to “When the baby’s ready.”

On my end, at numerous points along the axis I’ve been asked whether it’s hit me yet that I’m going to be a father, as if I were about to be struck by a baseball knocked over the hedge by a gangly urchin. To date the answer to that question has been an assertion of my readiness, my preparation, my active choosing. Now, however, as Jenifer and I approach the end of our time as Two, and I realize that our future travels will include a Third companion, I can offer a revised edition: the image of a an alarmed Wall-E scurrying from the massive dreadnought that’s now blotting out the sun, and whose landing is stirring up gale-force winds and the resulting dust storms. Of course, that could also be the result of our housecleaning campaign.

Going through books is a perilous task. In clearing out our old office, converting it to a guest room, I end up reading E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake,” triggered by a friend’s annual summer retreat to his Vermont summer home, and James Baldwin’s account of his time in a remote Swiss village, when I’m supposed to be reading manuals on parenting and childcare.

Amid these preparations, I receive news that an early script, Disaster Man, landed in the top 15 percent at the Nicholl Fellowships. It doesn’t advance, but nonetheless it’s encouraging to get a note from program director Greg Beal, who writes the nicest rejection letter you’ll ever get. I’ll have to catch up with him at the Austin Film Festival this fall (one of many reasons to make the pilgrimage). I find myself looking forward to this conference more than ever, in part because it will require the first significant travel in a year.

Last week Tom and I met to discuss future projects, things to pitch at the festival. He picked me up from the gym and we rode to his place in his convertible Skye. With the wind in my hair and Billy Corgan sneering on the “radio” (or whatever sort of satellite contraption Tom has set up), I was instantly whisked back in time to an earlier season, riding with Jenifer through the Stockholm archipelago the day after Midsummer. And then earlier: on the Autobahn with my old friend Thorsten, feeling very European with a scarf lashed around my neck because of a sore throat brought on by nightclub carousing. I was traveling through time, and the years held no meaning.

This spell held its power as, several days later, I found myself sifting through yet more books, more memories, stored in my parents’ garage. Here we reorganized space and time, and old books were not the only unwanted things discarded. Perhaps awareness that the Podnaut would soon be cleared to initiate its landing sequence is what helped us begin to dissolve the awkwardness that had passed between us for the whole of my adult life. All of us would soon take on new roles and there was no longer time for inherited and worn-out patterns of judgment and avoidance.

Afterwards my father and I threw the football for the first time in a decade. The motion came right back, as if no time had passed, and we dropped into an effortless harmony. I recalled the pang Mr. White felt, the chill of death, as he watched his son duplicate the actions of his youth, and I knew that I was stronger now, and my father knew it too.

36 Weeks

2008-07-31T10:31:00.003+12:00

Arc Welding

2008-07-24T13:35:00.004+12:00

I don't know about you, but this whole “writing” thing strikes me as a pretty treacherous preoccupation. I’m still reeling from the Triple Chocolate Cappuccino Cheesecake that is The Dark Knight and a friend working on a romantic comedy poses a question that goes something like this: If I am trying to demonstrate how my main character (we’ll call him Hunt) changes for the better over time, then must I have him abandon certain silly, quirky behaviors that seem part and parcel of his nature?

The short answer is “No, you can do anything you want, provided it works.” However, because I like to pretend I’m a script consultant sent back in time by John Connor to save my friend’s pre-apocalyptic efforts (he’d do the same for me), I find myself recalling a certain panel discussion at the Austin Film Festival from several years ago. Here the likes of Ted Tally, Shane Black, and Barry Josephson opined that the so-called character arc is not always necessary.

The action item here is that Hunt at some level can’t change—he’s Hunt. He can become more himself, more fully himself, but he’s not going to make a huge change in personality or style. He may finally realize what he was already capable of, nothing more (though that may well be a big stretch). Think of a personality typing system such as the Enneagram, if you will, in which there are nine distinctive ways of relating to the world. You might be a Three, you might be a Nine, but in any case your individual “arc” will be, we hope, from the less healthy side of Threeness or Nineness to the healthier side. But you don’t suddenly become a Four or a Seven because of a series of events or decision you make. You don’t adandon certain silly, quirky behaviors just because you’re making better decisions. Depending on the nature and genre of your script, the climax you choose might be the moment at which the main character finally realizes his fullest potential . . . or sinks into the depths of madness.

I am reminded of a helpful DVD special feature on Randall Wallace’s writing of Braveheart, in which he spoke of William Wallace’s “arc.” I found his use of the term surprising, since I take Braveheart as an example of a film in which the main character doesn’t change all that much. However, to Randall, William’s arc consisted in realizing that, in the end, all the fighting was not going to accomplish the change he sought; he would have to accept the personal risk of further negotiations with the nobles. That’s when his values, his commitment, are put to the ultimate test. And thus William fulfills the theme, that you must follow your heart, no matter what, even if it’s torn from your chest. (Imagine taping that not just to your PC but to the ceiling above your bed.)

None of this is necessarily news to a subsection of my readership, but nonetheless I find it intriguing that the naturalism that seems to result from the anti-arc argument suggests another way in which drama follows life. In fact, just this evening my friend rang me on the cell just as I was about to enter Target in search of a new notebook. He had another question for me, this one about turning points. Something tells me this new behavior is unlikely to change.

Fullsterkur 2: Halfway to Alexandria

2008-07-18T12:43:00.007+12:00

Please welcome Zack, our guest blogger today. Below he provides his account of our recent trip to the World’s Strongest Man Super Series in Madison Square Garden. Please excuse the title, however. I had lobbied for a simple “The Strongman and the Kid, Part 2,” citing the precedent set by the highly successful “You Are Burning Me” trilogy. I tried to reason with him, pointing out the long lineage of elegant titles whose company his would join. But Zack was set on drawing out the Durrellian elements of the experience while maintaining a measure of total badassness. What can you do?

. . . . .

When I went to the Strong Man Competition in New York , I didn’t know what to expect. One thing I can say, though, is that the competitors were a lot bigger than I thought they would be.

When we got there I was anxious to see these guys. Then Jouko Ahola showed up with another man [Phil Pfister]. Jouko was really big, but nothing compared to the other man. We all shook hands and then Ryan proceeded to talk to the other men. Eventually, Jouko left to go talk to some of the competitors. Then he walked over to another group of gigantic men. He looked small among them.

After that we went to Madison Square Garden to watch them set up for the competition. They had giant tires, coffin-shaped weights, and other gigantic lifting objects. My first impression was that all the men would be very stern, but surprisingly some of them had great senses of humor. After watching them practice for a while we went and had lunch.

Later on we went to the competition. It was amazing how radical some of the people there were. Also, at least 40% of the people there were Poles who didn’t speak a word of English. The competition was awesome. These men were so unbelievably strong! It was like no competition I’d ever seen.

A Summer Shower

2008-07-11T14:06:00.013+12:00

Shawna over at Shouting at the Wind recently asked whether her fellow writers are actually writing and what goals they’ve set for themselves. I dashed off something of a jujitsu non-answer, saying that these days I’m working on goal-free livin’. That’s an honest answer, if a partial one: on the one hand, yes, I’m concerning myself less and less these days with hard-and-fast deadlines when it comes to completing the various stages of the current opus, recognizing that when we allow it time is not so much a steady march as a wandering, though purposeful, exploration of a balmy summer day; on the other hand, the extended process of writing a movie is never far from the frontal lobe. But there’s a bigger fish to fry, too, and that’s the impending (though timely) arrival of my first child.

Thus, I’m excited to be about a sixth of the way through a new draft. A Real Draft, as opposed to previous outpourings of the ongoing iterative development methodology. It’s going well, swimmingly, in fact, and that’s probably because I’m not hammering at it every last second. But I’m also taking the time to prepare the house, read up on the baby literature, and enjoy my oh-so-busy social calendar. Please join me, then, as I set the flux capacitor to the second day of summer . . .

Earlier that day, which my traveling buddy the Kid had pointed out was already in fact “tomorrow,” I had returned from my field trip to New York City. There would be no rest, however, as I was to play second fiddle to the first, Jenifer, or rather the one within. We would be hosting a shower to celebrate the baby, and there was work to do.

Actually, my part involved showing up and waiting for my parents to arrive. I also bought four bags of ice (not enough) and poured them into a large bucket. In truth, however, much of the preparations had already been made, and we were fortunate to be blessed with so many helpers. So we waited while our guests made their pilgrimages to Phoenixville, to the backyard of our friend Susan’s yoga studio, ocean earth wind fire. Apparently, there is a fifth element, a cloaking device, that prevents otherwise high-functioning adult humans from missing the building, or in some cases the town, and so I sat and drank my Artisans house blend as they cranked their Google machines, GPS devices, maps of seven seas, and other assorted amulets. Previous weeks had seen frantic e-mails expressing great consternation over the coordinates to be plotted in the navicomputer; if at all possible, a friend explained, he would prefer to avoid coming out of hyperspace in the middle of the Cheesecake Factory several towns away, a likely occurrence since he had charted no less than four Phoenixvilles in a 50-mile radius.

But the guests arrived without incident, chief among them my parents, Bearers of the Cake. This was a confection built to exacting specifications by Martín and his staff at the House of Clarendon, an English-style bakery in Lancaster, and no one would dare cut the thing without my parents’ consent or exacting methods (which involved, among other things, a tape measure and dental floss).

Soon the afternoon was full with greetings and well wishes and plain old good conversation, as old friends and new mingled and enjoyed the garden, the music, the food. After a course of quiches, raw veggies, and mixed fruit, the Cake (chocolate pound with Bavarian crème filling) was dispersed throughout the gathered, accompanied by a trio of homemade artisanal gelato: strawberry, pistachio, and a very fresh and herbal mint. And the people were happy.

And so were we. Jenifer and I made our rounds individually and later reflected on our day, our friends and family. They had come for us, for the baby, this new person who occupied the most darkly shaded area of a sprawling Venn diagram of fellowship. These were our people and they would be the little one’s people, if only for a time, and we found ourselves deeply moved by both their generosity and their acknowledgement of our part, however small—or, perhaps, however grand—in the unfolding human story.

Hearts and Hands: Seven Songs

2008-07-03T09:04:00.011+12:00

This meme comes to you courtesy of Brian from Across the Water: List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now.

Ever since Jenifer and I started carpooling nearly every day, I haven’t listened to much music. We prefer to yammer. Here, then, a minor musical odyssey:

1. “Love’s Divine” by Seal, from Seal IV. This CD recently came back to us after being lost at a friend’s house for four years, not that I’m counting.

2. “Nobody Wants To” by Crowded House, from Time on Earth. The opening track to a CD I listened to nearly every day for probably three months. Wistful, brooding, thoughtful as ever.

3. “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty, from Right Down the Line: The Best of Gerry Rafferty (originally on City to City). Quite possibly my favorite pop/rock song of all time, nudging out U2’s “With or Without You” and The Police’s “Every Breath You Take.” I've never been to the place and the lyrics are dark, but for me this is the stuff of childhood: summer heat, that burning sax on the radio, and Star Wars in the theaters . . .

4. “Take My Hand” by Toto, from the Dune Original Soundtrack. Quite possibly a perfect song, except that at two minutes and 35 seconds long it is heartbreakingly short. The film was also too short but not perfect. (And yet still I love it.)

5. “Runnin’ Down a Dream” by Tom Petty, from Full Moon Fever. Saw him in concert for the first time a few weeks ago. Brilliant. I knew he was a great songwriter, but had no idea he was such a showman. Truly an American treasure.

6. “Falling Slowly” by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, from Once: Music from the Motion Picture. Great song from one of my favorite movies of last year. It’s even better on the screen. See it.

7. “The Right Moment” by Gerry Rafferty, from Right Down the Line: The Best of Gerry Rafferty (originally on Sleepwalking). The last track on the Best of album. Has there ever been a more haunting kick in the pants? Yes, and it is “Archaic Torso of Apollo” by Rilke, but that is a poem and not an iPodological phenomenon. Crank dat Soulja Boy!

Bonus track: “Yahweh” by U2, from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Some nailed Bono for being too on the nose with the chorus. For me, the track is yet more evidence that no other major act closes an album so well:

Take this city
A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city
If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break

Next up: Brett at A Bucket of Love, Shawna at Shouting into the Wind, Tom at The Bag Means Your Mind, Tony at The Money Pitt, Courtney at ice cream socialite, Gabi and Natalia at Spanish at the Kitchen Table, and Fun Joel at Fun Joel.

The Strongman and the Kid

2008-06-28T14:01:00.011+12:00

For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated by strength. When I was little, I knew my father was strong, with biceps like baseballs, and there was something awesome about this to me. He lifted weights in the garage, ran at the junior high track, and did his Army calisthenics routine on the backyard swing set he had built out of thick pipes. These things were all part of being a father, my father, and I wanted to be like him. When I was old enough I followed his ways, and he taught me how.

But I was naturally small, very small, and I felt my difference, my invisibility. Running cross-country and track taught me how to work hard, and to like it, but only amplified the inherited ectomorphic situation. Chronic overuse injuries from running allowed the weight training I was already doing to actually work, and eventually I traded one obsessive-compulsive regime for another.

But disciplines have a way of working on you when you do the work they demand. You can’t hold out forever, and eventually what was rooted in anxiety and adolescent fantasy grew into a method of knowing something of myself. Little by little I became more process-oriented in my gym pursuits, less concerned with the minutiae of routines and macronutrient ratios. This process took another big step forward when, several months ago, I began training 13-year-old Zack, the son of one of Jenifer’s yoga clients. “The Kid” is naturally big, very big, and feels his difference, his conspicuousness. We hit it off very well, and supervising his workouts while conducting my own necessarily took much of the focus off myself. And that’s a good thing.

I was really pleased, then, to be able to invite him to a strongman competition, the World’s Strongest Man Super Series. It was to be held in Madison Square Garden and my friend Jouko would be there as a referee. Perfect.

With the Kid working his GPS, I got us through the Lincoln Tunnel just fine, though in the jam leading up to it the Prius’s energy level had dropped down to purple. I tried not to sweat it, but to be honest I still haven’t read the manual and I didn’t know what would happen if even the two remaining purple bars disappeared from the screen: either the car would stop dead in its tracks and the Kid and I would be at the front end of an impromptu anaerobic training session all the way to the Hotel Pennsylvania, or a cadre of Homeland Security agents would descend from the sky and whisk us into an underground vault beneath the New Jersey Turnpike, where we would be debriefed on a new revision to the Threat Advisory System.

We ran into Jouko in the lobby of the Hotel. His hair was long, his beard unruly, and he looked every bit a Finnish Jesus. He noted that I was not the first person to mention this, and I knew that the disguise was in preparation for his upcoming role as a washed-up Olympic wrestler in Álvaro Brechner’s Bad Day to Go Fishing, based on the short story “Jacob and the Other” by Juan Carlos Onetti. With Jouko was the great Phil Pfister, 2006 World’s Strongest Man and at 6’6” and 375 pounds quite possibly the largest human I have ever met. Shaking his hand was like being enveloped in a gauntlet of bear flesh, and a tremendous honor.

The show wouldn’t start until 7 pm, so the Kid and I hung out in the WaMu Theater as Jouko and Phil (one of the emcees) and the competitors prepared for the show. It seemed to me that these strongmen, each physically exceptional, were more a band of brothers, chieftains from far-flung districts, than a disjointed collection of adversaries. Running the whole affair was the affable, energetic producer, Colin Bryce, who was also once an Olympic bobsleigher.

Jouko is quiet by nature, but here he was in his element, among friends, and it was clear that he was held in high esteem. (Later, while ordering dinner in an archetypical New York deli, Phil turned to me and said simply, “He’s a good guy.”) Even though Jouko retired from competition years ago, this event in particular held special meaning for him. The last time Madison Square Garden hosted a strongman competition, one of the competitors was the Polish strongman Siegmund (Zishe) Breitbart, whom Jouko portrayed in Werner Herzog’s Invincible.

If you’ve ever seen a strongman event on TV, you know that these guys do some pretty crazy stuff: pressing logs overhead, pulling tractor trailers, carrying cars. Stuff that takes a little more oomph than squeaking out one more rep on your triceps kickbacks. The competition began with the Power Medley, or Flip & Carry, in which each man flips a 900-pound tire four or five times, and then hauls a 385-pound weight 50 feet to the finish line.

The next event was probably the most exciting, perhaps because it reminded me of a sick version of Musical Chairs; only there’s no music, you don’t ever get to sit down, and you’re pulling some monster poundages. Enter the Last Man Standing Deadlift, wherein each contestant takes a turn deadlifting a barbell that gets heavier with each round. Jouko pointed out that an Olympic bar, which is more flexible than a powerlifting bar, was being used because it was more dramatic for television (the event—edited down to about 43 minutes—will be broadcast on FOX Sports later this year). Starting weight was 320 kilograms; the last man standing pulled 405 kg, nearly 900 pounds.

Two other highlights included the Húsafell Stone Carry and the Axle Lift. The Húsafell Stone takes its name from an Icelandic testing stone: Snorri Björnsson, an Icelandic pastor and playwright, used the 418-pound, triangle-shaped stone as a gate to his goat pen (by Björnsson’s day, Iceland was pretty much short on wood). If you could lift the stone and carry it the 50 meters around the pen, you achieved fullsterkur, or “fully strong” status. The Axle Lift demands that you clean an axle—complete with oversized tires—to your shoulders and then press it. You do that as many times as you can in a minute. Before the show, I could hardly get my hands around the axle and was humbled to learn that it weighed 135 kg, about what I deadlifted in Jouko's gym in Hämenlinna.

It was easy to caught up in the excitement, and while we may not have been as vocal and persistent as the astonishing number of Polish-Americans fans (cheering on Jarek Dymek), the Kid and I were both thrilled by the performances, the camaderie, and the satisfaction of a full day. At one point the Kid told me he felt better about himself after seeing all these big men. I couldn’t have asked for a better experience for him.

Afterwards, feeling like zombies, we said our farewells to Jouko, escaped the streets of New York, and made our way home again on the New Jersey turnpike feeling a little grander: a little less invisible, a little less conspicuous; somewhere, perhaps, between awkwardness and fullsterkur.

30 Weeks

2008-06-19T11:11:00.005+12:00

Hoist the Colors, Indeed: Out to the Ballgame

2008-06-13T14:45:00.010+12:00

Last weekend Jenifer and I found ourselves the lucky bearers of tickets to a Lancaster Barnstormers baseball game. 'Round here the attractions are the Reading Phillies and the Wilmington Blue Rocks, but we weren't going to pass up a chance to spend some quality time with my parents.

It's always strange returning home because I know the place better as someone who spent more time running the streets than driving them, and as an adult I rarely know where to go, what to do, where the food is. But thanks to the miracle of mailing lists, we know about and locate the funky Senorita Burrita in the up-and-coming midtown. We grab some great California Mission-style burritos and then, bellies full, in some cases really full, we hike through the stifling haze to the stadium.

Late in the game Jenifer is overheated and hungry and so I am sent to retrieve some ice cream. I scan the menu board and quickly determine that a cone is right out, considering the heat and melting point of ice cream, not to mention my extreme aversion to that messy condition Luke Danes of Stars Hollow aptly termed "jam hands."

Ah, a dish of ice cream. I have a long-standing dislike for the terminology, but the method sounds promising. There's something overly fussy about a "dish" of ice cream, and I didn't especially want to order one now and violate a dearly held conviction of my teenage years, when one of my (well-meaning) neighbors would occasionally invite me in for a dish of ice cream after I finished mowing his yard. A bowl I might have accepted, but not a dish, and in fact I didn't because I was a distance runner in those days and distance runners are crazy.

So I order this dish and in mere moments am confronted with a heaping pile of mint chocolate chip that is bursting beyond its paperboard confines; only then do I discover that a half-pint goes for 25 cents less. I've made my choice, I'm committed, but surely a half-pint is larger than a dish, I tell myself, the former having the ethos of geometry behind it, the latter signifying the forlorn remnants of an estate sale.

I pay the teenage purveyors of ice cream, judge them malevolently for assuredly having no dearly held conviction on the terminology of containers, and return to the fray. It's at this point that I realize we've reached the Act II turning point in the game, for now the Sounds & Furies are blasting in full effect: the lights are flashing, the mad organ player is pounding, Cylo the fuzzy red cow is emitting his grand moo (which is followed by a fat, enveloping bass tone that may well have been copped from the THX sound test), and no less august an American master than Yosemite Sam himself is barking at the opposing team's pitcher to "Quit stallin'!" All the stops are pulled out, folks, and the sun is setting, the carousel beyond left field is a-whirling, and by God if there isn't something close to magic in the air. It's corny, it's cheap, but there's a buzz in the crowd that isn't entirely fueled by seven-dollar beers, a fervor and a fever that's threatening to leak out and spread into the city streets like the MacGuffin in a latter-day Batman movie. Something is Happening and therefore we must Make Some Noise, or maybe it's the other way around, and I teeter between succumbing to the Chiba City hysterics of s(t)imulation and cresting a wave of myth and memory of sunlight days when I, too, played this game and dug my feet into the red dirt and tapped my bat on the dusty and scratched solidity of home plate. This must be something like America, and it's alright.

And this is to say nothing of the movie clips playing throughout the evening on the not-quite-Jumbotrons at the edge of the outfield. We are told that when the going gets tough, the tough get going and I sense the crime in never having seen Animal House; and later I recall with fondness how much I loved The Dream Team upon its release (and realize that it may well not hold up to a present-day screening). But the one that gets me is Elizabeth Swann's Saint Crispin's Day speech from the climax of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. It's a "popcorn movie," and a flawed one, but nonetheless this clip hits me where I want to be hit, and I wonder whether I'm the pregnant one, and then I can't help but laugh (at myself, too) when the pirates' hoisting of the colors cuts to the one-man cheerleading team waving the Barnstormers' standard, brandishing a plastic cutlass, and finally cannonballing into a swimming pool.

I know that I'm not alone in being affected by this stream of amusements, and I realize, maybe not consciously, that this commonality of feeling is something I haven't felt in this country in a long time. I've felt it in Europe, but it is different there and more differentiated here. Movies, baseball, ice cream—heck, even Ol' Blue Eyes crooning as fireworks bloom beyond center field—we know these tropes, and even if the common man in the stands holds dearly a conviction on this terminology and judges me malevolently for choosing it, they signal and announce our capacity to fulfill those moments, however brief, when we rise to do our best work in the service and defense of others and ourselves. They will know what we can do! And in this moment I know that this game, this stadium, all this blessed folderol, for this community, is good.

Sherpa and the Chairs of Chanticleer

2008-06-04T13:03:00.016+12:00

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet —
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.*
— Rainer Maria Rilke

We are once again without our Sherpa. She left on Sunday on a bus to Massachusetts and her boyfriend, and we have resumed the usual routine. That’s not to say we’re unhappy, only that we miss our friend, again.

Sherpa is one of our New Zealand Friends, and the one who followed us from Nelson, where we first met, to Wellington before driving us through the North Island to Auckland. More commonly known as Diane, our Sherpa is capoeirista, yogini, surfer, clairvoyant, barista, and, even if she doesn’t yet know it, burgeoning life coach: She’ll Get You There™. She is a New Zealander by way of San Diego, having sailed in a small boat across the Pacific with the family of another NZF, Taya.

Our holiday began last Wednesday evening, when we drove to Baltimore to pick her up. There was something adventurous about the extravagant distance, and something right about picking her up a year to the day since we had returned from the Land of the Long White Cloud. Seeing her again reminded Jenifer and me that perhaps the greatest thing that came out of our trip to New Zealand, apart from the magnificent sense of freedom and possibility, was the friends we made. A reminder that the best of friends pick up whenever they meet as if no time has passed at all.

I recently joked with the very first of these friends, with whom my history goes back over 30 years, that most of our friends are over 50. He said that we need to get out more. I replied that we don’t like young people. He laughed. My statement was not a complaint but a recognition of the Venn diagram of circles we travel in locally through the yoga community, my local men’s group, and the cultural creatives of Phoenixville. And so it’s odd that we should slip so easily into a network of similarly aged new people so far away from home, and odder still that this should have happened in Nelson. It is a town that is surprising international in population and which serves the same function for New Zealanders as the Southwest does for Americans. People go there to escape, retreat, recover, retire.

We wanted to show Sherpa our place, of course, but also something beyond the usual routines and haunts. Sure, Sherpa accompanied Jenifer on her daily yoga rounds, and we visited Artisan’s (where in a fit of nostalgia I claimed the title of Mr. Americano, imbibing my favorite Kiwi coffee drink with not two but three shots of espresso — P-P-P-POW!) But we needed to do something special, only what?

Memory of a brief documentary surfaced (public television being our chief means of contact with the Outer World), an inkling blossomed into an impulse, and suddenly the answer was clear: we would visit Chanticleer Garden. We had been astounded to learn of this place nestled only a short drive away in the horse country of Wayne.

Chanticleer proved amazing from the very beginning. After a picnic lunch alongside a stream, we made our way through the vast lawns and intimate gardens, marveling at the variety of wildflowers and coziness of tree-sheltered hideaways. Sprinkled throughout the property at key viewing points was an assortment of Adirondack chairs, and we tried them all. Delightfully playful and many-colored, one set was even painted with giraffe spots. From the solid New Colonial architecture of the estate to the sculptural benches and footbridges, everything seemed integrated and chosen with care. A fraction of the size of the ever-popular Longwood Gardens, Chanticleer was more private and more immediate. It’s designed to be experienced, not consumed. Truly a pleasure garden.

The remainder of the week found us mostly lazing, in part because my foray into the Wild had brought about the worst episode of allergicality since the elms of Stockholm laid siege to my sinuses two summers ago. We attended a beautiful kirtan on Saturday night, but our thoughts kept returning to the garden of the rooster.

The funny thing about traveling is that you really do learn as much about yourself, your culture, as you do about the foreign destination. At Chanticleer we were traveling previously unknown pathways in our own land and finding ourselves somehow richer, freer. The day was an affirmation of what we already have: a secret world hidden in plain view. In Chanticleer we found a little piece of luck in our own backyard. It gave us the kind of experience we’ve been so fortunate in finding abroad. For all our yearning to be elsewhere at times, we have a pretty good life right here.

*From “Buddha in Glory” in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke. Copyright © 1982 by Stephen Mitchell.

The Sequel

2008-05-28T13:37:00.002+12:00

The time is now. At last I can reveal the New Project. I know, you’re thinking, What about that sweeping Norse epic? and Where did I place my grocery list? A mere ruse, the Blue Harvest of spec scripts. No, the project whose very name I tremble with pleasure to utter, the script with a concept most high, is not the Viking-laden cleave-fest I mutter about from time to time but in fact the follow-up to American Jedi, a script I wrote with my friend Tom. The working title is I’m Killing Mr. Lucas Because He Hasn’t Released a Film on My Birthday: Being the Second Part in a Planned Trilogy of Assassination Comedies. I’d give you a synopsis, but I’m still working on the logline.

Thing is, George has a thing for Memorial Day weekend. It’s been good to him. And I understand that. You gotta make a living. So episode by episode, trilogy by trilogy, he sends his newborn films into the world, goes to Hawaii, and counts his money. That’s cool. But what’s not cool is that now, with the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, George has skunked me again. He’s had no less than 10 chances to get it right.

Ten opportunities to release a new film on my birthday, May 23. But no. Out trots Indy on May 22 and down goes another birthday in flames of bipolarity. He’s toying with me, George is. After all, these are the films that really mattered, the Lucasfilms of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. These were Movies, and they were the ones that fired the imagination, the ones that produced that scary pounding in your chest.

At least, this is the announcement I had planned to make. It turns out that someone had the audacity to invent these Internets and, checking my facts, I discover that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released on Wednesday, May 23, 1984. My twelfth birthday.

Huh. That was the night—a school night—that my dad took me to see the new adventures of Indiana Jones. Opening night. How could I have forgotten? Worse, it seems that Raiders was released in June. June! I sure hope George is happy. Now he’s stolen my thesis.

Tom called me the other day, and he didn’t say so, but I think he was disappointed I’d already seen the new Indy. I explained that I had taken the Kid to see his first Indy movie. (The Kid is a really cool 13-year-old I’ve been training in the ways of iron.) My own kid is on the way, of course, and I can only imagine that 12 or 13 years from now the Jones boys will still be trotting the globe in search of mystical artifacts. We'll be there.

And, yeah, it was great. Thanks, Dad.

***Note to Lucasfilm lawyers: No need to follow up on this one. Everything’s perfectly all right here. We’re fine. We’re all fine here now, thank you. How are you?