After Dinner

Sometimes, looking back on a few of the details of his life, he realized that somewhere along the line a great deal of his life had not belonged to him. In fact, he couldn’t remember being in control of many of the choices set before him at all. He felt it was like being set down to a table filled with various dishes of food he wasn’t particularly fond of—but had no choice—but to eat them. Of course he thought he could have just refused to eat. But that wasn’t much of a choice was it?

Much of the past that seemed so relevant at the time had vanished into a thick purple haze of blurred details and grease smeared windows, impossible to see through and sticky to the touch. Parts of what he did remember seemed to confuse and depress him, so he felt that the past was better left just that, the past, and he chose not to eat that particular dish.

He thought of his father from time to time. He thought of him a lot. A man he didn’t know. Funny how you can come from a place you know nothing about. There were memories of him in there behind that sticky glass but they were beginning to fall apart, degrade into a soft and mushy version of the previous hard form of reality, so familiar until of late.

He thought of his father often enough to wonder what he must have thought of himself. A man who fought in a war. A man who left Texas with his son and never looked back. A man who appeared in a black and white version of a dreamscape in North Carolina and left as though he were written from the script of a television show. As though the writers simply couldn’t figure out what to do with him. So he stood around smoking cigarettes for a while on the set and then, he didn’t. Gone, as in gone. As in what the heck ever happened to…

His family didn’t leave much behind he knew, just old photographs and boxes filled with trinkets and old clothes. It was as if they were determined to disappear and cover their tracks. He still had his grandmother’s china and he thought it was pretty but he knew it was just cheap old plates printed with a knock off willow leaf pattern that she bought with green stamps at the Winn-Dixie back in the early seventies. What he had of his fathers, he could hold in one hand. It bothered him to the degree of bringing on a periodic depression, and a feeling of utter uselessness from time to time. What kind of a man leaves not a trace but a plastic box behind? Some old boots. A box with a hardware store giveaway screwdriver for your keychain, a broken watch and a cuff link, (yes, a cuff link, not a pair) doesn’t seem like much of a legacy does it?

Well it was pathetic. It made him angry and he wanted to punch out at the world and yell and cuss and fight the very God that created such nonsense. But you couldn’t do that could you? God didn’t fight fair. Never has. Never will. He doesn’t have to. He created the game remember? And on the eighth day God created man’s ability to be absolutely screwed by a world filled with snakes and apples. It seemed to him that God was very much like a child at times. Changing the rules of a game when it seemed to suit him. When the going got tough—so to speak. Erase the board, make smaller creatures.

So he just carried that ridiculous feeling of uselessness around with him and he took it out from time to time and he felt sorry for himself and then he put it away and he got on with his life. He knew there were people out there a whole hell of a lot worse off than he was and he felt sorry for them more than he did himself, and he knew that was a waste of time too, but he did it anyway.
Life was a strange trip indeed and he felt that he possibly never had the proper map on which to set his course. How does one take a trip without the proper course?

Maybe that was the point of it all he thought, we just wander around and look for a way to get out of the woods. Some people were just better at it than others. Some people had a better map, or a better compass, or easier woods. Some people never saw the woods at all. The trees were cut down for them before they got there. Maybe the point of life itself was just seeing how far out of the forest you could get before you started to forget the details. The details that built a life. That string of yesterdays with the choices set before you that you don’t want, but have to eat anyway. Or not. Not much of a choice.

That was it. That was how he saw it and he knew it was stupid to dwell on it but he did. The one thing he knew without a hint of a doubt, was that he would be better off if he stopped dwelling on it. He put his earplugs back in his ears and he turned on the audiobook “No Country For Old Men” and he picked up his chisel and he did. That was enough of that.

There was a legacy out there for him to build that wouldn’t fit into a plastic box. He would make damn sure of that.

Then he realized that he was his father’s legacy. He thought about that for a minute, pausing with his chisel in mid cut. Now that was something to think about. He would get back to that later. After dinner maybe. Somewhere in the next chapter, a little farther out of the woods.

The middle of the story.

Not the end.
Tony Whitford

Life

Its funny how your life becomes the controlling factor in who you are.
I’m not talking about the life within you, your soul or essence, the force of being within you; but rather the life you live every day. The job, the hobbies, the food, the cleaning, the bills, the money or the lack thereof. It has a way of taking over. Then one day you realize there must be more to it. As the lyrics in one of my favorite songs explains, “You run and you run to catch up with the sun that’s sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again.” So you ask yourself, Am I not more than my job and the bills? Am I here - merely to feed the system?
Your life, controlled by credit.
Your life controlled by an overwhelming sense of losing it all.
Your life controlled by money.
Your life controlled by insurance?
Your life controlled by fear.
I shudder to think that’s all there is.
And the fact of the matter is. I believe it isn’t. We are so much more. We are Fathers and Mothers, and Poets and Artists, and Musicians and Chefs, and Writers, and lovers and husbands and wives. We are alive. We live on a big beautiful planet full of wonder and mystery floating in a galaxy of stars. That all by itself is amazing. We are traveling at 108,000 km/h or roughly 67,000 mph which means our planet travels 940 million km during a single orbit around the sun. Mind blown right there. We have numerous opportunities, every day, to learn and create and to tell the people around us how much they mean to us. We have the capacity to love, laugh and fill this world with art and joy.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe we should look at it a different way. Life I mean. Maybe we should try to see each new day as a chance to change it all, our destiny, our perspective, and our world. Teach yourself something new. Google it. Right? You want to know about bees. Then learn about bees. Is space your thing? Art, Music, Food? The world is out there…waiting for you to see it-and learn about it and make it beautiful with your own special stuff. You. Your life. The real you.
The money problems, the insurance, the debt. That is not who and what you are. I fight with it every day. I do not want it to contain me, control me or make me less than I can be. Put your arm around your friends and family and support them. Help them be more. I’m willing to bet they will do the same for you. We all can be more if we stop thinking about the problems and start seeing the solutions. Just a thought…it’s not as easy as it sounds sometimes. But it is what we need, to be more than just - life.
Tony Whitford 10/20/2015

The String

By A.W.Whitford                                                                                                                   

One morning, when I was a little boy, I found a string lying in the grass by a tree. I picked up the end of the string, surprised to find it there. I pulled on the string and watched as it lifted into the air parting the blades of grass, wet with the morning dew. As it rose from the grass droplets of dew sprayed into the air around it turning to mist, creating rainbows that wavered before me in the bright morning light.

I shook the string watching it zigzag through the air and swung it around in circles as if I were playing jump rope with my friends, amazed by the way it stretched across the yard and on into the distance. I pulled on the end of it wanting to gather the string and explore its length. The weight of the string seemed to pull back as if something, or someone on the other end were waiting for me to follow, for surely there was an end somewhere. Had I not already found one of them?

I began to follow the string, pulling on it as I walked across the yard, pretending that I was a mountain climber making my way across a vast mountain range, made up of black crumbling shale cliffs that could break away from under my feet at any moment. I followed it across the backyard, around the garage, past the rusting gardening tools and dry rotting old tires and down to the street running parallel to the small houses placed neatly in a row along its borders.

 I stopped and looked back at my house before following the string across the street, knowing I should not leave the yard. I stood there for a moment, feeling as though I left something important behind, feeling as though there was something I should say—or do. I saw my Grandmother standing at the sink in the kitchen, her silhouette clearly visible through the glass and sun faded curtains and I watched her there cleaning the morning’s dishes. I waved at her—but she did not see me—and so I said goodbye in a small voice heard only by the birds singing in the trees above me, watching with wary eyes and nervous wings. I began to gather the string and follow it, pulling the rough string with my little hands, feeling its fibers vibrate with anticipation each time I let go with one hand and pulled with the other.

 After a short while I turned to see how far I had gone, and the little house, the first one of my memory, began to slip away, becoming smaller and smaller as the string began to pull me along as quickly as I could follow.

I suddenly felt as though the string needed me to see something of great importance. It was as if whatever waiting for me there—on the other end—could not wait for me to arrive. A sense of urgency far too great for me to ignore pressed me onward, moving me toward something that I needed to see, something that needed to see me.

 Hours passed in seconds, weeks passed by in minutes, years passed by in days and I followed the string, looking up occasionally to see a house, or a girl with a beautiful smile, reaching out to me as I walked along with the rough thread sliding through my hands.  Still, I followed, amazed at the prospect of finding the end. For surely there was an end somewhere—wasn’t there?

 Once, when my feet grew tired, my hands grew cold and cracked, and my hunger for rest became more than I could bear, I tried to drop the string and go back home. Finding the end no longer seemed important to me. I wanted to be still and rest. I wanted to enjoy the world around me. I wanted to live in the moment. I began to realize that the world around me passed by as if I did not even exist, as if I were nothing more than a dandelion seed floating in the wind. I had become insignificant, an echo in the void.

 I longed to see the past again and feel the warmth of my small room filled with books, games and toys. When I turned to see where I had been, nothing waited for me there. The past was vanishing behind me as if an eraser of enormous proportions were wiping it from the pages of my life, leaving only blurred images, vague memories, forgotten words and faces.

I decided to let go of the string. I decided I would drop it, turn around, and go home.  No matter how hard I tried to let go—the string stayed in my hands as if it were a part of me. My Destiny, my fate, waited on the other end

 When I stopped walking in revolt against its power, it pulled me along faster causing me to run in an effort to keep up. The world passed by in a blur of noise and confusion. I watched as family and friends disappeared behind me, some said their goodbyes—their voices broken by the wind rushing in my ears. Some simply turned away, as if they never knew I was there.

 Trees grew and fell away; children lived their lives without me. Still, I followed the string, praying that the end was near. My body began to fail, my legs began to shake, no longer capable of supporting the weight and wear required of them. I fell to the ground and stared up at the sky watching in amazement as tattered clouds passed by chasing the Moon. The Sun rose and set bouncing on the horizon like the blinking of a giant bloody eye.

The string pulled me through the dust of time and over the bones of those fallen before me as I watched the stars above, dancing in the blue-black ocean of the night. I prayed to the heavens, to the gods of the Moon and the God of our fathers, pleading with them to let me go home. I closed my eyes and listened to the voices of the past and the voices of my weak and weary heart. I slept and dreamt the dreams of the forgotten.

I dreamt of a father and a little boy. I dreamt of a baseball glove and the smell of the leather and freshly cut grass. I dreamt of a child shouting at his grandmother that he wished he could hurry up and be older, so that he could be free from her rules. I dreamt of my purple spider bike, I dreamt of the huge rough hands of my Father, and the lines burned into the palms of his hands. I dreamt that I held his hands in mine and I rubbed the scars with my thumbs and asked him how he got them. He smiled at me and said, “From following the string that brought me to you.”

I looked up into his hazel eyes and I began to fall. His hands slipped out of mine and I fell through the darkness, flailing my arms, as the string tangled around my legs until I jerked to a stop hanging upside down in the dark, suspended in space. 

I awoke, startled and screaming and opened my eyes to the dazzling sunlight slicing over the rooftop of my childhood home. The sun shining on the wet grass created sparkling diamond reflections in the air around me. I rubbed my eyes with my fists as I rose to my knees in the grass by the tree where I lay—blinking and struggling to make sense of where I was.

Birds sang kindly in the limbs above me, welcoming me to the new day, and the string was gone. I looked at my hands; they were still soft and new, with only the faint wrinkles of life beginning to form in the smooth pink palms.

I stared at my hands opening and closing them, hands that would learn to play a guitar someday, hands that would build sandcastles and bookcases, hands that would pull wriggling fish from the ocean and the hands that would hold the hands of my children. I stood and looked around, I was home again and my heart filled with hope and relief.

I heard the familiar squeaking of the hinges on our screen door and I turned to see my grandmother walking out onto the porch wiping her hands on her apron. I ran to her and hugged her at her waist nearly knocking her down.

"Here now what's this about?" she said, pulling me back and looking at me, surprised by my sudden show of affection.

"I'm just happy to see you that's all," I said.

She looked at me with a question in her eyes, as if she knew something, as if something in my eyes frightened her. She held my face in her hands and smiled. She opened her mouth to ask—but then changed her mind.

"Go eat your breakfast," she said, and opened the screen door. I looked back for a moment, scanning the yard, making a mental note of the bushes and trees, the garage and the fence, the layout of my world, the way I would always remember it. I looked up at her, she smiled and nodded and I went inside. The warmth of the kitchen filling my soul.

©2011

4/28/2011

Turn To Stone

Standing quietly, watching over the hill filled with monuments to the dead.
Never pausing to rest.
Never seeking shelter from the rain or cold.
Never hiding his eyes from the pain.
Never turning away from the awful grace of God, the savageness of man, the hate we feel for another.
He waits for us to see, he waits for us all to be - the ones who will hold out their hands, in that single act of kindness that can transform the fury, that will transform the suspicion, that will carry us, one and all, to the promised land.
This land of ours, this land of milk and honey, of mercy and love, of forgiveness.
Will we shelter them?
Will we feed them, educate them, listen...when they speak, hear... what they say?
Or will we turn away, turn to stone, and stand on the hill - filled with monuments to the dead?

Tony Whitford
  6/28/2015

Giants On Parade

When we were young

We watched the palace fall out of the sky

We waited for the dragon

Dripping love to make us high

We ran with gods and drank their wine

We ate the dreams of men

We called upon the hearts of Troy

And we shouted in the wind



In time we learned to twist the vine

Escape through smoke and shield

We slept beneath the clouds of gloom

And turned the broken wheels

The steel we wore spoke to our hearts

We drank the blood of youth

We buried blades in waterfalls

And lied to find the truth



We drove our shining time machines

And flew the dragons dry

We carried love across the sea

And vanished from the sky

The bridges burned in purple smoke

Our horses sawed their reigns

We charged across the fields of hope

And cursed the yellow stain



Our cries of "Death to boring lives"

Rang through our fierce brigade

Our hearts were filled with martyrdom

Our hands affixed to blades

The seeds were sewn, the minds were blown

The Piper dearly paid

The whirlwinds dusting kingdom come

Were giants on parade



The fires of torn and tearing down

Now smolder in the rain

And Silence fills the empty halls

Where music filled the stage

Wild poppies rustle in the wind

Where skin and bone provide

The strength to hold the crumbling walls

The years, the crushing tide



 By Tony Whitford
March 23, 2012

Things to do

How can we find the time to do the things we want to do (need to do).

Where does one find the space, the money, the freedom, to fulfill their dreams, escape from reality, and run through the fields of nevermore? Well, the reality of this is, I don't know if you can. Sure, if you were independently wealthy you might. But would you really appreciate it? Maybe it's the need to see everything and touch every texture of life that keeps us pushing ahead to a better ... you. Maybe it's the fact that some things, some dreams, can or never will  be, and that keeps us stepping into the future with a sense of hope.

I don't know about you, but I have so many things to do...

Things to do

All of the things I want to do sit in a pile before me

The stack has grown so tall

I can no longer reach the top

Without the aid of a ladder

The things at the bottom of the pile

Date back to my childhood

Something that seems so very long ago

These are barely remembered

Or, forgotten

Among them lies, a song

The Grand Canyon, wolves on a rise

Silhouetted by a pale yellow moon

Horses running on a field of grass

A doctor, a poet, scientific discovery

Paintings and instruments leaning in a corner

Furniture to be built

Planes to be flown

Fly line playing out behind Bonefish, slashing clear water

Garden paths of stone

A hooded raptor resting on my arm

Books to read

Stories to write

People to meet

Collections and photographs

Houses to design

Schools and cars

Rebuild an old Harley

I jot the newest of them down

Climb the ladder

And add it to the pile

A few of the newer ones tumble down

I descend, pick one up and read it

A trip to Scotland

I weigh it in my hand. (nice one)

I add it back to the pile

Right where I can see it

And go to work

© 2011 Tony Whitford

Holes in the soles of our shoes

By A.W.Whitford

Yesterday I was listening to an audio book, “Crusaders Cross,” by one of my favorite authors, James Lee Burke. In the book the protagonist, Dave Robicheaux asks himself, is it possible that hell is just a place you step into on any given day. The question struck me like a car running through a stop sign. I felt myself take a step sideways, physically moved by the underlying logic hidden in the question. I ran through the question again, allowing it to submerge, maybe soften up a bit around the edges. I turned off the audio book and I thought about that for a while as I worked. I thought about the different definitions of the noun, and setting aside the obvious netherworld connotation, I settled on a more simple meaning. The inescapable and extremely unpleasant situations we find ourselves thrust into on a daily basis, and I do mean thrust into,(more like jammed into, like that last bit of dirty laundry on the floor around the already overstuffed hamper, smelling of mildewed towels and socks,) could be considered hell.

Therefore, using that as frame of reference, the answer—was yes. Not only could we step into hell, it seemed as though we could also live there for an extended period, and if we're lucky, leave again.  An extended leave of absence from our normal life and a temporary residence in hell was completely possible for most, and more than we would like to admit it, actually happening for many.

Consider the man at the intersection holding the cardboard sign, his eyes dejected, his face unshaven, and his clothes wrinkled and worn. I think it would be safe to say that he probably came from a normal life. (Insert your own form of normality here.) Maybe he lived in a three-bedroom ranch, drove a nice truck and held down a good job at a shipyard. And maybe one day as life was slowly chipping away at his dreams, he realized that he could no longer live in the realm of the angels—but instead was cast out into the land behind our lives, the backend of the world, so to speak, the place where hell begins.

Was it John Steinbeck that said, “We have come to fear the man with holes in his shoes?” if you were to look at it from his perspective, wouldn’t we be the monsters that he sees in his dreams? Do the people that leave the parking lot at Applebee’s satiated and clean, filled with an inner light from the friendly conversation and alcohol buzzing in their blood, look like demons to him? Can he hear what they say as they wait for the light to change to green?

“Why doesn’t he get a job?”

“I really wish those people wouldn’t stand right here where we have to look at them.”

Why do we avert our eyes, trying with all of our might not to look at him, finding something suddenly interesting to look at on the dashboard, or the console between the seats, knowing that he’s right outside the window of our transportation back to the Elysian fields.

Why are we afraid of them? What is it that they represent that makes us turn away? I believe that he’s just about as close to hell, without being on fire, that you could possibly be. And I believe that scares the hell out of the rest of us.

So yeah, stepping into hell looks like a distinct possibility, war, hunger, watching your loved ones die, physical pain, broken hearts and mental anguish, all of that may be the hell we heard so much about as we struggled to shake off the cocoon of childhood and grow into adults, spreading our wings in the cold morning air. Each of us has a demon living within us. Each of us has an angel as well. Which one we choose to be is entirely up to us. Fate certainly has a way of knocking at the most inopportune time. You never know when you might take that step.

Let’s try to remember not to put holes in the souls of hearts, while we’re trying to not to be the ones—with the holes in the soles of our shoes.