It was an interesting week.

Sunday was Father’s Day and I didn’t get in a fight with my wife. That’s a major accomplishment because it seems like right before every holiday – both major and minor – we get into an argument.

The blame is mostly mine for not being mindful of the stress these holidays give her, and thus treading lightly in the 24 to 48 hours before they begin.

I made the same mistake (again) this year on Mother’s Day – though I was oblivious to it at first.

Rising early, I got everything set up to celebrate the day, but by 11:00am, my wife had not come downstairs. A text inquiring if she was up yet went unanswered, so I decided to run out and do a few errands.

Being a heroic husband, I texted again around noon to see if she wanted me to pick her up something for lunch.

Ding!

“No, thanks” was the response.

Whew, I thought. I’m in the clear.

But I wasn’t. Not by a long shot.

Ding!

“By the way, I’m mad at you.”

That was followed by a series of “dings”, each indicating that a new one-line text had come through, none of which were very flattering towards me.

“I’ll give her a minute to cool down,” I said to myself. But a few minutes later, the dings were still coming in hot and heavy.

It reminded me of playing slots in Vegas and hitting 7 – 7 – plum – cherry – 7. It’s a winner but not listed on the payout chart, so you don’t know how much you’ll get or when it will stop.

At five texts I thought about defending myself, but before I could think of something to say, we were at ten texts, and at that point, even I knew better.

After strategizing a bit, I decided to reply with “I hear what you’re saying.”

But before I could hit “send” my wife must have seen the three floating dots indicating I was writing because she preempted me with “don’t even start texting right now.”

Backspace, backspace, backspace…

At fifteen I thought it’d be safe to use the emoji version of “I hear you,” and begin giving every fifth text the thumbs up symbol.

Suffice to say, there was a lot of venting going on, and though I was fully prepared to let it run its course, she could have at least taken some etiquette from Twitter and let me know how long the textstorm was going to last.

“1/432 You’re an asshole.”

But on this Father’s Day, I (finally) learned my lesson. Though it is my day – in theory – I tiptoed around the days leading up to it and made sure I didn’t do, say, or even think anything that would get me in trouble.

Tuesday found me wrapping up another year of my kid’s scholastic career. It’s always a painful day for me.

My father liked to work with his hands and always had a project going on. When he died, he was in the middle of building an old-fashioned children’s sled -which was rather odd as we lived in Southern California and there were no children in the house.

His process was meticulous.

The garage workbench was the nexus of the project. It was there where he kept the plans, tools, and materials needed to build the sled, as well as the custom-made hardware, decals, and ornamentation, each stored and labeled in their own specific pullout drawer.

Each piece had significance. Each piece had import. And losing just one of them – even a single stainless-steel screw – could stop the project in its tracks.

But the moment he died, the project – and the pieces that made it up – lost their meaning.

The hand-carved runners. The polished blades. The rose and thistle stenciling. Every part of the sled suffered a terminal loss of what made it important.

A small death brought on by a larger one.

Fully aware of the dramatics the statement carries, the end of the school year is a small death of sorts for me.

The backpacks and lunch boxes so deliberated over just nine months prior are cast aside, tattered and torn.

The required folders for each subject, decorated with doodles of boredom and superheroes of inspiration, have no more part to play.

The science project we stayed up until midnight to finish, the lines for the school play we memorized, and the 36 grammar and spelling packets we stressed about weekly no longer mean a thing.

And my kids could care less, so it’s up to me to sift through the ephemera from their final day to determine what things – if any – I should save.

Lecture notes, quizzes, and homework assignments are easy – trash, trash, and trash.

It’s a toss-up with the art projects, term papers, and report cards, things they might look back on with fondness – or at least curiosity – 20 years from now, but then again, may not give a damn about.

I used my best judgment and saved about 2/3rds, while the rest went into the trash.

But the backpacks and lunch boxes aren’t as clear cut.

In my mind, I envision mounting them chronologically – trophy hunter style – along a highly lacquered piece of oak, with appropriate grade level and teacher’s names on brass plaques under each.

I will then present these totems – with great pride and tears in my eyes – to my children at their respective wedding receptions.

To which they will, if I’m lucky, respond with a gentle hug and “there, there” pat on the back, while winking at the crowd behind me. But more likely, will just stare in shocked embarrassment, then give the DJ a frantic head nod, meaning, “quick, play some Bruno Mars so we can get out on the dance floor.”

So, I put them in the “we’ll see” pile.

Finally, I come to the gut punch pieces. The “Why I Love My Mom/Dad” type pieces. The easy pieces.

When I turned 20 my mother kicked me out of the house – rightly so as I was an insufferable A-hole. But when I left, boxes of my belongings – packed by her – came as well.

In those boxes were years of art projects, term papers, and report cards, but also “Why I Love My Mom” projects. To this day I can’t figure out why? Why didn’t she want to keep those for herself?

I made them for her.

When it comes to my kids there’s no question about those types of items – I want them all. And so, I hoard every single one of them.

Friday found me lying in a dimly lit room as a technician moved warm gel around my abdomen with an ultrasound wand.

No, I’m not pregnant.

Two weeks ago, I went in for my annual physical. For the most part, everything checked out okay.

But when the labs came back, there were some minor issues.

My cholesterol was slightly above normal. This is a semi-regular occurrence since turning 40 and means I’ve been too sedentary. I start riding my bike, running on the treadmill, and limit my Double-Double intake to once every other week, and like clockwork it goes back down into the normal range.

I also had slightly elevated liver enzymes. And when I say “slightly,” I mean “slightly.”

Google “normal liver enzyme range” and you’ll universally get a range of between 10 and 40. However, for some reason, my doctor/labs say 10 to 35 is the normal range – and I came back at 38. Last year I was at 37.

To me, this was not very worrisome. Lot’s of things can raise your enzyme count. Alcohol. Check. Prescription medication. Check. Tylenol. Check. Let’s just say, it was no mystery to me as to why my levels might be slightly elevated. But my doctor suggested an abdominal ultrasound.

I’ve got great insurance, so why not?

Lying on the table, I tried my best to avoid playing “game the technician,” but it was unavoidable.

The rules of the game state that the technician will know exactly what they are looking at on the screen. Kidney stone, swallowed car keys, stage IV cancer, they can discern them at a glance.

And so, I watch the technician for telltale signs.

A furl of the brow. A twitch of the eye. The almost imperceivably quick frown which says, “WHOA! THIS MUTHER FUCKER HAS CANCER.”

But my tech had a poker face and wasn’t giving away any clues.

No problem. I have a fallback plan.

She was taking a lot of time on my right side. And one spot – just under my ribs – seemed to have a particular interest for her.

Back she went to that same spot, over, and over again.

“SHIT, SHIT, SHIT…SHE’S FOUND SOMETHING,” I screamed to myself.

Okay, calm down, I thought. You don’t know how this is done. Maybe this is part of the standard procedure?

Desperation breeds genius, and in a stroke of revelation I came up with a plan. If she spends the same amount of time scanning my left side as my right side, then everything is normal.

The right side had taken about 5 minutes, so when she started on the left side I began counting.

“Okay, we’re done,” she said.

It had only been two minutes.

“FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, I’M DYING. I’M A DEAD MAN!”

The report came back fine. Everything is fine.

But laying on that table it occurred to me that everything could change in a moment. You go along in your life thinking everything is great, then you get hit by a car, your child gets ill, or they find a tumor on your liver.

And it also occurred to me that if that happened, I’d be so mad at myself for having wasted time arguing with my wife, or stressing out about keeping worn out backpacks, or worrying about getting sick while I was healthy.

As I said, it was an interesting week.

The old man was grizzled, like he’d gone through the wars. 

Time had taken a toll on him and it showed in his scruffy white beard, ruddy complexion, and red swollen nose.

In better days you’d be forgiven for thinking you were in the presence of St. Nick on holiday. But as he sat there in his soiled coveralls you could see there was nothing jolly about him now.

When his turn came, he slowly rose from his seat, and in a low solemn voice said, “Hello. My name is Richard. I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hi Richard,” the room replied.

He stood statue-still as stale cigarette smoke swirled around his work boots, cutting an almost mythical figure of defiance. Like a warrior who’d faced down his own worst demons and spent decades resolutely standing on their graves. 

“And I’ve been sober for one week.”

Okay. Maybe not.

I didn’t know what to expect when I attended my first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but a few things surprised me. Like the amount of coffee drinking and chain smoking that went on. Or the variety of attendees.

The room was full of men and women – both young and old – who, at least by appearance, looked like they came from all levels of social strata.

Yet it was Richard who surprised me most. From the looks of him, he had to be at least 80, an age I assumed you could never reach as an active alcoholic.

But Rich was a professional drunk – his words – and fucking good at his job.

I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry when he described how he rigged up a complex system in his car that enabled him to drink on his drive home from work without detection.

“I removed the windshield wiper fluid reservoir from the engine compartment and sterilized it in boiling water to make sure there weren’t any toxic chemical resins left behind.”

Good idea, I thought.

“Then I replaced it and filled it up with vodka, or scotch, or whatever I had on hand.”

Clever. But how was he going to get it into…

“And then I ran plastic tubing from the reservoir through the dashboard and into the glove compartment.”

Genius.

“So did that work?” asked Bob no-last-name, the meeting sponsor.

“For a while,” Richard replied.

“In fact, it worked so good that I got more smashed each time I drove home. Finally, I got so bad one night that I ran into the freeway median. 

“What happened then,” asked Bob, in a way that indicated he’d heard this story – or a dozen different variations – countless times before.

“When the police got there, they smelled booze coming from the engine compartment, and they figured things out pretty quickly.”

This was more than my 19-year-old brain could take and I let out an inadvertent but audible chuckle.

“How about you?” Bob no-name said, turning to me.

“Tell us your story. Why are you here?”

Attending an AA meeting before you’re 21 is like going to couple’s therapy before getting married – a bad sign.

But I wasn’t there on my own volition. I was there by court order – or at least court heavy suggestion – on a fluke occurrence.

A year out of high school, my buddies and I decided to attend a homecoming game at our dear alma mater.

Afterward, as was the custom, we headed to Naugles – the precursor to Del Taco – a SoCal institution, where one could soak up the excess alcohol swimming through their system with 99 cent burritos, bun tacos, and my favorite, the deluxe burger.

It was also a great place to pound low cost, high ABV brews while trying to figure out where to party for the rest of the night. And consequently, the parking lot was always littered with dead soldiers.

When the police arrived that night on their semi-regular rounds, those who were imbibing knew the drill and scattered behind parked cars, lamp posts, or into the alley behind Alpha Beta.

Sober as a judge, I held my ground, and, cocky as all hell, casually leaned against my buddies’ car, just daring the fuzz to hassle me – like I’d seen them do so many times before on The Mod Squad.

Sure enough, one of them walked over to me and shined his flashlight in my eyes.

“What-ya been doing here tonight son?” he said.

“I’M NOT YOUR FUCKING SON, PIG,” I said – in my mind.

“Nothing,” I muttered.

“Have you been drinking?” he said.

“Nope,” I replied, with attitude.

“You sure?”

“100% sure.”

“Well then what’s that?” he said, shining his light at the empty six-pack of bottles near my feat.

“Hah,” I said, cocking my head in a way designed to convey the message, get the fuck outta here.

“Those aren’t mine.”

“Really,” he replied, walking over and picking up the carton. “I say they’re yours. And I’m going to cite you for drinking in public.”

“Yeah, but they’re not,” I said, still unaware that I was playing a game I had no way of winning.

“Okay. Then why don’t we go down to the station and discuss it?”

When I arrived at my court date, I still had some naïve idea that I was going to beat the rap. Take on the man. Break the system.

And with that attitude, I told the assistant to the assistant DA that I was going to plead not guilty. He didn’t bat an eye.

“You certainly can do that,” he said. “But you can get up to one year in jail and a $1000 fine if you are found guilty.”

I panicked and started doing the math.

At the time I was still living at home. I could explain a few days away by saying I was over at Brad’s. Maybe even a whole week with a story about a road trip. But a year? There was no way I could pull that off. My parents would suspect something by the third month at the latest.

“B-b-but no judge would sentence a first-time offender to a year,” I said, surprised by the balls I was showing, while subconsciously knowing that it was some random TV lawyer speaking through me.

“Yes, you’re right,” he said to my shock. “Here is what I propose…”

Ten AA meetings. That’s what he offered. Attend ten AA meetings and your citation will be thrown out. And of course, I agreed.

I investigated the local AA newsletter and found a meeting on Friday nights at a nearby elementary school.

That’s where I met Richard. 

That’s where I saw industrial strength coffee makers churning out pot after pot of liquid caffeine and crystal ashtrays overflowing with ash, soot, and lipstick stained butts. 

It’s where I saw men and women at the end of their rope – and returned from the abyss.

And it’s where I met Bob no-name’s gaze, stood up, and proudly proclaimed, “My name is Brian.”

Then nothing more

In one sense, the hole in the television was beautiful, almost artistic.

The impact – from what I first assumed was a broomstick, but later turned out to be a hammer – had punched a perfect circle in the center of the tube, radiating a sunburst of fine cracks towards the edge of the screen.

That it hadn’t exploded in an electric storm of glass shards puzzled me. All the TV’s I’d seen smashed by guitars in bad 80’s music videos had done so. But the lack of dried blood or bits of flesh in the shag carpet in front of the television cabinet convinced me otherwise – and somewhat disappointedly I must confess.

None of my roommates were home to help solve the mystery, but explicitly understanding the dynamics of a house shared by four twenty-something males, I started to backfill a theory as to why the only TV in the house was now inoperable.

And it wasn’t just any TV. It was a 32” Sony Trinitron, arguably the best set you could buy in 1986. And even though my roommate got it for free by pulling a credit card scam at Circuit City, it was still a loss.

Occam’s razor suggested an overly inebriated partygoer had backed into it while playing air guitar with a broom, but that’s as far as I could take my mental exercise as I was tired and numb. To the point that kissing sixteen channels of cable TV goodbye for the foreseeable future didn’t even register.

I had just arrived home after a six-hour drive from Arizona, where my girlfriend and I spent a week trying to make Castaneda-like connections with the spirits of dead shamans, but instead got drunk and crashed in cheap motels. 

I was disappointed by the experience, though the fact that Castaneda’s tool of transformation was peyote and ours was Crazy Horse Malt Liquor did not occur to me at the time.

It was upon climbing the stairs to my room that I realized the damaged TV was just the beginning of a tale that would end with the spilling of avian blood and a public shaming, the likes of which Huntington Beach, California had never seen.

—-

The older you get, the more your circle of friends solidifies. Though you still might pick up some acquaintances later in life, it’s very rare to develop true friendships after forty. Rarer still is meeting true friends of your true friends – those whom you’ve never met before. That’s because, by the time you hit forty, you’ve known your true friends for a long time and are much more likely to have met anyone else meaningful in their lives.

Meeting friends of friends is something that happens in your early 20s.

That’s the time when your world is expanding, first by leaving high school, and second by entering college or the workforce. That’s when you first start to meet people who don’t know your parents or siblings, aren’t familiar with your hometown, and don’t share a common history with you.

Meeting a friend of a friend is a dicey proposition when you’re young. They come with implied approval due to their relationship to your new friend, but not a guarantee. After all, you haven’t really known your new friend that long, so how can you be sure they are a good judge of character – present company excepted.

For me, it worked like this…

In my early 20s, I picked up some new friends whom I ran with for a few years. One was from across town, another from one county north, while three or four others were transplants from out of state. Those were the ones you had to worry about.

The transplants were trying to get away from something. Usually a small-town mentality or small-minded people.

But small-minded people aren’t very good at getting the hint, and every spring break or 4th of July holiday a friend of a friend would arrive in town, excited to see what Southern California was all about.

That’s how I first met Snap. His real name was Sean.

Sean was a good guy. A solid guy. He was intelligent and polite, even thoughtful at times. The type of guy you’d introduce to your mom and she’d tell you the next day, “I really like that Sean.”

But Sean was a different person when we went out drinking – which happened quite a bit.

One moment everything would be great. Everybody would be laughing, joking, and having a fun time. Then in an instant, it would all go bad.

Sean would fly across the bar and crack a random guy in the jaw. Or scream “you’re a fucking bitch,” to a girl whose only crime was to order a drink next to him. Often, he’d break down and sob incoherently to his friends, who, while trying to console him, would suddenly be accused of mockery and challenged to a fight.

The worst part was that you never knew when it would happen. On some nights it only took one beer before things went off the rails. On others, he could drink all night long without incident.

But when it did go bad, it always happened without warning. There were never any signs or telltale clues that he was about to go off. He just snapped.

So, we called him “Snap.”

—-

As I came to the top of the landing, I noticed that three of the four doors to the bedrooms were open, an unusual occurrence in our house. Though all my roommates knew and mostly trusted each other, it was best practice to keep your door shut.

And it was no coincidence that the only door that was still closed had a lock on it. Or that it was mine.

Walking past the open doors, more damage was revealed. In my roommate Andy’s room, his pride and joy, a five-component stereo system, had been destroyed.

All the knobs from the tuner were on the floor, and the posts that held them in place bent downward as if hit by a hard object.

Both the windows on the dual-cassette player were cracked, like some solid metal object had been smashed into them.

The five-disc CD player had dents all over its case, the type that would occur if a hammer type instrument had struck it.

Hmmm?

And finally, both speakers had multiple holes punched in front and back, each the same size and circumference as the hole on the TV tube downstairs.

Double hmmm?

Then I passed Greg’s room and saw that the strings on his prized guitar were hanging by the tuners, as if ripped out from the bridge. There were also round impact marks across the face of the guitar which matched up with the stereo and the TV.

I was sensing a pattern here.

My third roommate, Jeff, has a couple of things askew in his room but no damage as far as I could see.

As tired as I was, I couldn’t help but modify my theory. Besides, it was simple.

Andy worked five days a week and had to get up at seven each day. Because of this, he was always in bed by 9:00pm. However, Greg was currently in between jobs, and liked to watch TV downstairs until early in the morning. On more than one occasion – sometimes multiple times per night – Andy would come out of his room and ask Greg to turn the TV down.

Sometimes once was all it took. But other times it might be four or five times before the request was acted on, and by that time they both were screaming at each other like maniacs.

Like I said, it was simple. Andy finally had enough of the loud late-night TV, came downstairs, and in a fit of rage, smashed Greg’s TV screen with a hammer.

Greg then took the hammer, ran upstairs, and went to town on Andy’s stereo system. After he was done, Andy took the hammer and attempted to destroy Greg’s guitar.

My roommate Jeff likely tried to break them up – physically – which is why some of the stuff in his room was knocked around.

Simple.

So I unlocked my door, went into my room, and crashed for a well-needed rest, unaware that the real culprit in this mayhem was “Goose.”

—-

I met Goose for the first and only time when I woke up from my nap. His real name was Eric. I never did get his last name.

He was a friend of a friend – a transplant – who had been hanging out and partying at our house for the last three days.

Our house sat on the corner of our tract’s outlet street, right next to a main thoroughfare. Sitting on our front lawn, you could see a wall across the street which ran along the length of that thoroughfare denoting our neighbor’s backyards.

It was in one of those backyards where a honking sound began on the Saturday night I was trying to commune with dead Indians (sorry, that’s what we called them in 1986).

The sound was made by a goose.

Apparently, Goose – the friend of a friend, not the animal – was in the front yard drinking with my friends and roommates and got annoyed by this sound. So he announced to anyone who’d listen, “I’m going to go over there and kill that fucking goose.”

With that he threw down his beer, grabbed a club out of an old golf bag in the garage – I think it was a three-wood – ran across the street, and jumped the fence into a random neighbor’s backyard.

Immediately, he was confronted by a full-grown male Canadian goose, honking, and using its long neck to lunge and peck at him. According to Eric’s police deposition, he freaked out, took a swing, and despite never having played a hole in his life, connected flush with the head of the goose, immediately silencing it and in the process, separating it from life.

Eric claimed that he never meant to hurt the goose, just to scare it, but when it lunged at him, he panicked, causing him to take the fatal swing.

But that wasn’t the end of it and retaliation was swift. In addition to reporting it to the police, the owner of the goose got his brother and a buddy together, grabbed some tools, including – c’mon, you know where this is going – a hammer, broke into our house when everybody was out, and proceeded to do as much damage as possible to our highly prized consumer goods.

But he didn’t stop there. He also called the local newspapers – when local newspapers were social media – and begin a shame campaign.

So though Eric returned to the shithole from whence he came, never to face justice – or return to HB again, my roomates and I had to endure the scorn that arose from a series of front page articles about the goose murder, each one accompanied by a photo of the neighbors holding up their photo of Susie – their deceased pet goose.

I’ve been coming here for a little over 10 years now and it’s definitely one of my “happy places.”

There is a unique vibe and an energy here that forces me to slow down, relax, and think. It puts me where I need to be – in the here-and-now.

Of course, there really isn’t a vibe or an energy here.

What there is are wide rustic panoramas.

Wildlife that doesn’t know or care where the boundaries of your property lay.

The smell of cold water splashing on the hot concrete deck of a long rectangular pool.

There is a familiarity here that acts like keys, unlocking memories from a simpler time.

From a cross-country trip with my parents where we stopped to explore abandoned barns, old mining towns, and where the passing mountain ranges seemed to stretch for centuries in either direction.

From the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales where I walked through wallabies, emus, and wombats as casually as walking through Leicester Square.

From hot summer days with my cousins, where we launched ourselves on a towering trajectory into my grandparent’s pool from a type of diving board so powerful they finally outlawed it (in California at least).

Six years ago, my Sonoma trips changed.

Now my wife stays home and my best friend – and host – forces his wife out of the house to facilitate a “Father’s Weekend” with our kids.

These trips give me unimaginable satisfaction, knowing that just as old memories of the past are flowing out of me, new memories for the future are flowing into them.

They don’t know this of course.

They only know all-day swimming, burgers and dogs on the grill, the doe and fawn that wandered into the yard, Mickey Mouse pancakes, too much ice cream too late on movie night, and the never-ending refrain from their fathers to “put down that device.” (They eventually got locked in a cabinet – the devices, not the kids).

That’s how memories work. For the most part, we don’t know what moments are being pinned to our cerebral cork boards for later access. But when we do – when we’re aware that it’s happening – it’s the best feeling in the world.

Sonoma provides me no vibe. No energy. Only a unique quality of mindfulness – a massive hit of the here-and-now.

And that’s where I need to be.

The ceremony was long, but the speeches were mercifully short. In one of them, the class valedictorian quoted the recently deceased Anthony Bourdain;

If I’m an advocate for anything, it’s to move.
As far as you can, as much as you can.
Across the ocean, or simply across the river.
The extent to which you can walk in someone else’s shoes or at least eat their food, it’s a plus for everybody.
Open your mind, get up off the couch, move.

When I graduated high school that was all I could think about. Moving. To Australia.

Three days after I threw my cap in the air and strutted out of Edison High School with a 2.36 GPA,  I was on a 14 ½ hour flight to Sydney with my two best friends.

We were spending six weeks down under – under the nominal supervision of my aunt who had moved there years before – but unbeknownst to my buddies, I harbored serious thoughts about sending them back one man down.

At the time I was directionless. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. And it seemed as if the act of moving as far away as I could – 8,152 miles to be exact – in and of itself would spark an epiphany, parting the clouds like Zeus, revealing behind them my true purpose.

The problem was, I had other companions traveling with me.

Like fear. Insecurity. And self-doubt.

Six weeks later I was on my way back home, disappointed – no, devastated that the land of Paul Hogan, Vegemite, and INXS had not rescued me from myself.

Move. Move as far and as much as you can. But wherever you move, there you are.

———

As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that the “move” in life that matters most isn’t about location, it’s about moving forward personally.

It could be a new book to read, a new idea to ponder, the questioning of long-held beliefs, or taking on a new challenge, but self-improvement is like air to me – I need it to live.

My son is in third grade, and on his last day of school, he excitedly ran up to me and waved a certificate in my face.

“Hey buddy,” I started. “What’s that?”

“It’s an award,” he replied. “I got it in front of the whole class.”

The award read; Most Improved – Camden Lund. Mrs. Payne’s 3rd-grade class. June 19th, 2018.

Most Improved?

In my youth, I’d been conditioned to regard “Most Improved” barely higher than the dreaded “Participation Award.”

What is ‘Most Improved” compared to “Best in Class,” “Honor Roll,” and “Kiss Ass Principal’s Pet?”

Answer: It’s fucking everything.

It’s movement. Forward movement – the best kind.

So move. Move forward. And no matter where your hierarchy on the scale of accomplishment – strive to improve yourself every day.

News of his death hit me hard, and like millions of others around the world I feel like I lost a friend.

It’s almost unbearable to think that he’s not out there somewhere right now, waiting to tell us about a new adventure. But he’s gone, and the world has a palpable void.

Of course, the question everyone is asking is “why?”

How could the man whose tagline was, “I’m Anthony Bourdain. I write, I travel, I eat, and I’m hungry for more,” take his own life?

It’s been suggested that depression drove him to suicide. I can’t speculate on that, but I do know the construct of a depressive episode.

Though they vary in length and intensity, there is a beginning, an end, and in between, a nadir – the lowest and darkest place.

We tell people with depression and mental health issues to “get help” or “reach out,” but when you are at the nadir and the gloaming comes, perspective and rational thought abandons you. The only thing you can do then is to hold on.

To suspend all actions. To avoid making a life altering, or sometimes, life ending decision. To wait until Aurora comes to part the darkness.

It’s likely he waited there many times before, but this time she came too late to save him.

It’s hard for an optimist like me to put a positive spin on death. On some level it’s insulting to even try. But what choice do we have? Life goes on.

Bourdain’s death – along with Kate Spade’s before him – has brought to light the mental health problem we face as a country. Hopefully, it means more awareness and a better chance for those who need help.

But as individuals we can do more.

We can remember to be kind.

That you can never know someone else’s state of mind. That the people we interact with every day – in person or online – may also be at their own nadir.

And that just a little bit of kindness can help bring them back into the light.

Anthony Bourdain: 1956 – 2018

The beer I drank too late. The raccoons fighting in the yard. That insurmountable feeling that I’m on the downhill run of life.

Take your pick.

2:30 am will use any excuse to get you staring at the ceiling, contemplating your mortality.

Turn on talk radio? That all-night classical station? Maybe count sheep?

No.

The only thing that allows me to slide back into the arms of Morpheus when Venus shows why she’s called the ‘Morning Star’ is the knowledge that they’re still here.

So I rise, walk ten paces to the door, down the stairs, to the corner room where a Wal-Mart bunk bed – bought on clearance – stands.

I pause and listen.

When newborn, I’d silently slip into the nursery and press my ear to their nose – and my heart would hold, waiting to see if I could hear breath.

Now, it’s a soft snore or the rustling of a body that doesn’t know it’s growing that sets me at ease.

They’re here.

They’re still here.

This is a tough time of year for friends. Facebook tells the tale.

A split-screen photo of a young man or woman – standing in front of an administration building – appears on one side of the frame.

They are invariably flanked by proud parents whose smiles can’t fully hide their bittersweet emotions.

The source of these emotions is easy to discern— you just have to look at the other side of the photo.

There you will see an image, more than a decade old, of that same young man or woman, wearing a backpack and clutching a lunch bag, ready for their very first day of school.

The text in the update always laments how fast time has flown.

I know that I too will be putting up that same split screen photo in less than a decade.

I know that those coming years will go as fast as those that have passed.

And I know that when it comes, I will be dying inside – trying to pretend that I won’t miss them and that my heart isn’t breaking.

When I am old and invalid, clutching at the remaining straws of my life. When their presence is seldom and far away. When my eyes tear and limbs tremble in memory of precious days gone by, I will sustain myself with the memories I now make daily.

The breakfasts made – oatmeal on weekdays, waffles and pancakes on the weekend.

The lunches packed with an eye to variety, nutrition, and occasionally, chocolate.

The morning drop-off where I hold their hand as long as they’ll let me and which always resolves with a kiss and admonitions to enjoy the day.

The afternoon pick-up with sincere inquiries of how the day went and what they learned.

When I am old and frail, I will remember all these things and be sated and full from the afterglow of a time I cherished with all my heart.

But for now, I stand in the dark, and they are here.

They are still here.

One clutches a stuffed Minecraft ocelot close and kicks the covers off his feet.

The other boroughs deep into her blankets, leaving only a mop of reddish-brown hair as proof that she occupies the bed.

But they are here.

They are still here.

With great relief and attendance to the moment, I climb the stairs and walk the ten paces back to my bed.

I lay my head upon the pillow and rest with the knowledge that, despite being a secular soul, I am blessed beyond belief.

And as I drift off into the shallow remains of night, my last lucid moments before slumber are soothed, knowing that they are here.

They are still here.

To that end, Tony writes;

We may not be able to pry guns out of the cold dead hands of some. We can shape a future that does not include the glorification of weapons.

…. we need to create a campaign similar to the anti-cigarette smoking model. Images of puss-filled lungs and rotting teeth replaced models and actors acting cool while lighting up. Kids listened.

This idea is brilliant in its simplicity. We know marketing works – which is why the fight against smoking started with banning cigarette ads – so why not use it to reshape the way the next generation views guns?

To be sure, this is not a solution to the current problem of gun related violence, nor does it help efforts to bring about better gun control legislation. Those are separate – but related – problems that can be attacked simultaneously.

Instead, this is a long-term approach designed to change the DNA of Americans when it comes to how guns are viewed in our culture.

Unfortunately, there’s a powerful group that is bitterly opposed to this idea. They are well-organized, connected with politicians in every state, and have spent billions fighting against attempts to reframe the image of firearms in our society.

No, it’s not the NRA. It’s the entertainment industry.

What’s particularly disturbing about this is that Hollywood and the entertainment industry – which traditionally aligns itself with anti-gun advocacy – goes to great lengths to argue that saturating movies, television, and in recent years, first-person shooter games, with guns does nothing to promote gun violence.

And let’s assume that’s correct. Because that’s not the argument. That argument is a red herring.

The question is not, does viewing gun violence cause people to commit gun violence? The question is, does the glorification of guns constitute a tacit form of marketing that desensitizes us to what guns are and the damage they can do?

Common sense would tell you it does, but there are hundreds of studies that say the same thing. Here’s just one example.

In a recent study by researchers at Ohio State University, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a group of children were shown a video that included gun violence. A second group was shown a video without guns or people using them.

After this, both groups were placed in a room with a real but disabled gun stored in a cabinet. Those who watched the video containing gun violence were more likely to handle the gun, hold the gun longer, and pull the trigger more times that those who watched the video without guns.

By the time those same kids turn 18 they will have viewed thousands of hours content in which guns and gun violence is glorified, or at best, presented in a detached, antiseptic way. How can this not continue to perpetuate the idea that guns are just a cool part of our culture?

That leaves Hollywood in an uncomfortable position. Guns are part of the American culture and guns in entertainment sells. So, if they want to help to reshape the next generation’s views on guns they will have remove and deglamorize them, which will hurt their bottom line.

Do you think they’ll do that?

And what about their anti-gun allies? Why don’t they speak out against the glorification of guns? I suspect for a few reasons.

First, the subtleties between the causation argument and the desensitization argument are lost in the passion of the gun violence issue. Basically, it doesn’t play well in small sound bites.

Second, they get a lot of their funding from the players in the entertainment industry and are not about to gore their own ox.

And finally, there’s this idea among many in the gun control debate that there’s a silver bullet fix to the problem. I suspect most folks who should be speaking out against the entertainment industry’s continual glorification of guns don’t because it takes away from their own pet solution.

Unfortunately, gun violence in America is not a one-issue problem, and by extension, there will not be a one-solution fix.

The irony is that you can’t implement effective gun control measures in a country with a history of romanticizing guns until you change the mindset of its people. Tony’s idea would go a long way towards making that happen, but until we remove our blind spot for Hollywood’s glorification of guns, it’s hard to think it will.

• How I got into trading (2:31)
• Why I use Technical Analysis (6:30)
• The biggest challenge to successful trading (8:45)
• Social media as a trading tool (11:09)
• The one thing I make sure to do before entering a trade (19:59)
• My best advice for new traders (22:01)
• The scariest trade I ever made – and what I learned from it (23:45)
• My most memorable trade – and what I learned from it (28:40)
• My favorite toy (27:19)

There’s a lot of stuff packed into this quick 35-minute podcast, but if you’re short on time, make sure to check out the section on proper position sizing starting at the 14:45 mark. I’ve also written a short piece on this subject for those who can’t stand the sound of my voice (trust me, I get it).

The Most Important Concept for Successful Trading

If you’ve got any question about this topic, anything I covered in the podcast, or anything about trading and markets in general, feel free to hit me up on Twitter, StockTwits, or at brian@thelundloop.com.

Also, this is not a “the market is crashing” post.

Unless you spent the week binge watching all six seasons of Kate & Allie, you’re probably aware that we’ve had some violent days in the market.

As nerve-wracking as it’s been to watch triple-digit down days in the S&P-500, on a percentage basis, none of these moves has even cracked the Top 20 biggest declines.

I don’t tell you this to reassure you, I tell you this to warn you.

We haven’t seen a really bad day yet. But we still might.

The problem with violent moves is that they break things. Things like allocation models. Risk profiles. Margin requirements. And so on.

You need to look no further back than Monday to see how volatility “broke” the XIV ETN.

And when things break in the market, the mechanics take over, often forcing individuals, funds, or institutions to do something they don’t want to do – sell indiscriminately – which further exasperates already extreme moves.

I believe we are currently in a “market mechanics” type of environment.

Does this mean the market is due for a major crash?

Absolutely not. The market could as easily rally 5% from here as it could drop another 5%. I have no insights into what it will do, but I can tell you what I think it has the potential to do in the near-term.

It has the potential to make a move greater than you’ve ever seen before.

This type of move won’t respect your EPS estimates, valuation models, or even my beloved technical analysis  – and you don’t want to be caught on the wrong side of it.

So, what should you do?

Well, you don’t have to do anything. Sometimes watching from the sidelines is the best play.

But, if you have some dry powder, one thing you could do is get out your shopping list of stocks you’d like to own and put in some stupid bids way below the market.

What shouldn’t you do?

Don’t buy leveraged products.

Don’t go on margin.

Don’t buy at a price you’re not comfortable with.

Don’t buy a position you’re not comfortable holding for a while – and through more volatility.

And most important, don’t use up all your cash, in case you have to do the same thing again.

As I said, the purpose of this post is not to scare you, but to make you aware that (I believe) we are temporarily in the type of market that can do you real harm if you’re not careful.

The good news is that it will not last.

Someday – maybe not too far away – things will settle down and we’ll get back to a more “normal” market environment. And hopefully, when we do, you’ll have some spoils of war in your portfolio that will serve you well in the future.

But until that happens, be smart, be safe, and take care of yourself.