Fenway went to puppy school tonight.  It’s his first night, and for me it’s the second time through, albeit for me it’s been thirteen years since I set foot in the training ring.  He handled it well, actually.  Like a champ.  A teacher’s pet, perhaps?  Both trainers loved him, and they gravitated towards him as he intuitively behaved for their commands. He even did it for me, the lead dog in this pack, and the guy he drives the most crazy with normal puppy antics.  All in all, a good night.

He got lots of treats.  And praise.  I was taught how to behave consistently around my four month old dog.  It was exhausting.  And it highlighted some of the key issues I have personally.  I’m a softie, for one.  I need to get tougher- on him and on me.  No compromises…he needs to behave.  And I supposes that mirrors my personal life, too, whether it be writing, teaching, or just plain living.  Be consistent.  Be balanced.  Expect high standards from all, and don’t settle for less than you expect.

It all makes such sense in the ring.  With a handful of treats and some reassuring trainers it becomes a wonderfully rewarding win-win situation.  But, unfortunately, when we left the ring that boy of mine reverted back to the pre-first day training puppy.  Always testing my resolve.  Always trying to be the alpha.  And therein lies the life lesson: be consistent, fair, and balanced. But he’s just so cute.

And so, just like training, it’s hard.  I have to remember my training and be resolved to follow through.  This is hard for me, as I’m sure it is for all of us.  And, like the picture above, it leaves a puppy (and a man) exhausted.

Happy Birthday, Uncle Al.  Al DeYoe would have been 99 years old on March 17, 2012 had he survived the cancer that took his life, but not his indomitable spirit, twelve years ago.  I need to take a moment now to reflect on the legacy of Uncle Al, but, more importantly, I will try to glean whatever lessons I can from this man’s wonderful life.

Al DeYoe was a guy who knew how to live.  He never seemed to let life bring him down, even when it sucked the most. After losing his wife, a wife he diligently took care of after her stroke, he carried on.  ”Have a drink with me, Buddy!” was his common refrain.  We had lots of parties with him, some big but mostly small.  Often, two to three people constituted a party.  It didn’t really matter to Al, as long as people were having fun.  I think it’s called a zest for life.

Whatever you want to call it, I have reflected on it lately, this love of life.  I am currently experiencing a surreal, out of body kind of moment for me, where I am stuck longing for one life to move forward, but knowing that it probably never will, and having to come to terms with the fact that I can’t do anything about it; it’s completely out of my hands.  Which saddens me.  And when I’m sad I think of Uncle Al, his joy, his drive, and I think that the things that are preventing me from moving forward really aren’t that big when you consider it in the scope of a lifetime, that the little things to work out now will seem small in five years.  The risks of losing out on joy are too high to be taken lightly, and Al never let a moment of joy slip by.  They were too precious, and he knew it.

That was why he always seemed so sad when people would leave early from one of his parties.  They were missing out on all of the good stuff.  They would always say that they had really important things to do- I did it myself on occasion- but now that he’s gone, and there haven’t been parties on Marlene Drive for over a decade, I wonder if they regret leaving early.  I know I do.

I don’t want to leave the party early.  There’s just so much more to experience.

Oh, and on a side note, I found this great country singer named Jimmy Wayne, and am blown away with this song.  It kind of sums a lot up for me.

Running on my current theme of songs that move me, I offer this one from Ben Folds.  This guy is one of the best song writers around, and this song is just so beautiful and moody; it hits spot on the feelings that are still very, very raw for me.  In this time when so much music is devoid of feeling or genuine emotion, this is just heartbreakingly real, and filled with joy and love.  Isn’t that what we all strive for?  Enjoy.

“The Luckiest.”

I don’t get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls
Brought me here

And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it everyday
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

What if I’d been born fifty years before you
In a house on a street where you lived?
Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike
Would I know?

And in a white sea of eyes
I see one pair that I recognize
And I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties
And one day passed away in his sleep
And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days
And passed away

I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong
That I know

That I am
I am
I am
The luckiest

I absolutely love Billy Joel…

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self defense

And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break

And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows.

My last post seemed to strike a nerve with some, and that’s good, I suppose.  That’s what blogging is all about.  But I think I need to clarify a bit before this moves on.

1. I wrote the post from a place of frustration (not a bad thing, by the way, to write as an outlet), but I broke my own cardinal rule: never hit the POST button until you’ve had time to reflect.

2. while I don’t necessarily disagree with what I said in the post, I also don’t feel, after a night’s sleep, that it  faithfully characterized the particular situation I was reacting to.  Comments made in the heat of any moment rarely do.

So I’m left with choices.  I could erase the post and move on.  I probably should.  It’s proof that I just haven’t learned the lesson I’ve preached on these pages for years (NO PERSONAL WRITING).  But I could also leave it and try to clarify my position, sort of a living version of the editing process.  This I think I’ll attempt.

While the post was dealing with reactions I have been feeling about work, life, relationships, writing, and the whole big ball of wax (I know, don’t we all have to deal with this stuff?), it really centered around one particular aspect of my life.  And that’s unfair.  I tend to allow specific aspects of my life to run things.  It’s true what I said in the post, I can’t compartmentalize.  It’s a problem, because sometimes you have to, and I have trouble with it.

So if you can’t compartmentalize, then whatever is happening in one aspect of your life will unduly influence all of the others. A bad day at work leads to a bad day at home.  You get the gist.  And the thing that surprises me is that the professional elements of my life have been kind of sour lately (not bad, just not as good as they have been in the past), and my personal life hasn’t changed, but I took it all out on the personal side.  It’s unfair.  But it’s life. Maybe my personal life has been simmering away under the surface and I just haven’t dealt with it fully.

I am an advocate of balance.  When I’m out of balance I lash out.  Maybe I need to balance myself more, compartmentalize more.  maybe then I won’t have such unrealistic expectations when it comes to sharing my life.  Who knows? I’m definitely a work in progress.  And one that hasn’t learned fully to restrain his keyboard.

So this is a mea culpa of sorts, to those who know who they are.  I believe that writing requires dedication.  I believe that we all need a room of our own to grow, flourish, and succeed.  I just don’t want to see myself or those I love stay locked up for too long in their own rooms.  I still think it’s better when you share.

When it all comes down to it (such a a cliche), what do you have?  You have yourself. No one can make you happy.  No one can make you write more.  No one can shower you with enough praise to get you through the day.  No, in the end you only have yourself to rely on.

I suppose we all learn this at one point or another.  I have come to the conclusion lately that at this stage of my life (mid-forties, divorced, two teenaged daughters, puppy…the real gold standard of eligibility) I need to become more selfish.  Weird, right?  I suppose many will guffaw at this.  A man who needs to be more selfish?  Really?

And those guffawers would be right in lots of cases, just not this one.  I’m not selfish, and it kind of has been a detriment to me.  You see, I believe in building things collaboratively…together.  I’m good in a committee.  Personally, I like to share experiences.  I’ve never believed in compartmentalizing things.  I just let it all become part of my life, which I willingly shared. One big soupy mess.

Others, by the way, don’t do this. Newsflash for me.  But, then again, I’m a slow learner.

And I should learn from them.  No great novelist created a master work by opting to leave his desk early to be with his family.  No short story writer sacrifices her moments of solitude in favor of a bike ride with her husband.  No, they diligently plug on.  They work. The togetherness crap must be for the weak or the non-driven, things I guess I’ve been.

Excuse?  Maybe.  I sure as heck haven’t been writing as much these last few years as I should have been.  Maybe I was just too concerned about sharing my life.  So in the end the lesson is this: focus on yourself and your family and your writing, for the work matters above all else.  If you want to be the best.

Hard one for me to swallow, but, then again, I haven’t seen much cheering for the opposite side.  Maybe it will be easier, after all, to just lose myself in my work.  Everybody’s doing it.

Four o’clock is the hardest time.  That was when I took her out for her afternoon constitutional.  I patterned my day around the four o’clock hour: gym sessions were pushed back, social obligations (what there were of them) were delayed, work was cut short. The reward was, of course, seeing her bound up to me, deliriously happy to see me.  A reward of doggy slobber and unrestrained energy.  And that reward was massive.  And for that I am eternally grateful.

I put my dog down yesterday.  She was thirteen.  December 26, 1998-December 29, 2011.  Words can’t really express how I feel right now, and I feel badly about that because, as a writer, I should be able to put into words what that seventy pound Yellow Lab meant to me, but how can you express the concept of everything in a few, well-turned phrases?

Love, joy, safety, security, warmth, need, and fun.  To start.

I will miss her, that dog of mine.  The last link (other than my kids) to an older life, a life prior to the upheaval of divorce and change, has now been severed. And the house is quiet in her absence.

I know it’s perfectly normal to anticipate seeing her in the house, on my bed, in the living room, eating at her dish, but normalcy doesn’t make it easier.  I still expect her there.  I drove a little faster today to make sure I was home by four.  I still listen for the jingle of her collar in the other room.

Maybe I’ll think of it that way.  She’s just in the other room, waiting for me. Waiting for me to come in and rub her ears or wrestle with her or kiss her head, like I used to.

God, I miss my friend.

Goodbye, Zoey. Thanks for all the love.

“To sorrow I bade good morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly;  She is so constant to me, and so kind. I would deceive her, And so leave her, But ah! she is so constant and so kind.”

~Keats, from Endymion

Welcome to Christmas week. Hang in there.  It’s going to be one hell of a ride. Thanks to Hugh McLeod for the greatest, weirdest, most apropos comics at just right the time (see his site at http://gapingvoid.com/).  Don’t stare directly into the void, you’ll go blind.

” Day after day, give me clouds and rain and grey. Give me pain if that’s what’s real–it’s the price we pay to feel. The price of love is loss, but still we pay–we love anyway…” from the song, “Light,” in Next to Normal

I was cruising through a friend’s Facebook account and came upon this nugget of a song lyric, and it hit me! Boom! A story ending popped up at me and I started writing and researching.  First, though, I have to say that this song is lovely and the play sounds wonderful.  But really, it’s the ending of the story I want to talk about.

It’s all relative, I suppose, the pain we feel for love.  For some, the slight annoyances of a daily relationship can be just that- annoyances.  Then there are those who take those annoyances and just run with them, metaphorically, and become basket cases.  And what happens when you multiply those annoyances over a twenty year marriage? I see myself in there, but won’t say which end I fall on.

Because it’s about a story I’m writing about here, after all, and not about me.

In my story a middle aged housewife sits home alone in her weekend home, which happens to be a sheep farm, and which her husband, a lawyer and gentleman farmer, once felt was his priority but now has moved on to bigger and better hobbies in town (it his hometown and he likes to spend his time hanging at the local Knights of Columbus with old high school friends), waiting for him to return.  He is a very powerful lawyer in Albany, so he often is called back to the office or spends late nights working.  She is an editor who gets texts via .pdf file.   She has interacted with the local high school kids who help her run the place (a subplot I won’t expand on here), and now sits in the dark, sipping wine, waiting for him to return and wondering how the young kids are working their problems out.

She used to feel like she was part of the life she had built with her husband, but now is just lonely.  She could go out and try to join the local life, although he’s made it pretty clear that his friends at the K of C are a rather coarse lot, and that she wouldn’t like their company.  She could strike it up with old friends from New York City, where she is from, but the distances is the issue.  Instead, she paints. And when we leave her she is sitting in the dark with a half finished canvas, feeling torn apart.

But I’m stumped on how to end it.  I like the song from Next to Normal because it reveals my character’s true feelings about love.  She wants to feel something, even if it’s pain.  She wants to be with him, not be sequestered in a house while her husband whoops it up with the locals.  “The price of love is loss,” -which is so powerful a line- “but still we pay…we love anyway.”And so does she stay waiting? Sipping her wine? Or does she move?  And if so, to what?

And maybe that’s the ending I’m looking for…not a real ending at all…it can go either way…hopeful or negative…but just a sense of looming decision.  Or is that a cop out?

The bottom line is we garner inspiration from the weirdest things, but when we do, we have to run with it.  And so I guess I’m off to run.

There are no words, I suppose, to accompany this poem, written and recited by acting legend Jimmy Stewart on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show in 1981.  Maybe it’s my state of mind lately…