Amedeo, a historical novel, is set in Trieste, in the final days of World War II.  The brothers, now in their 50s, haven’t spoken to each other in 20 years.  Their paths diverged as they began their careers.  Umberto became a banker, and Amedeo rejected the white-collar world and became a trolley driver.  Umberto fell under the spell of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s romanticism and nationalism.  Amedeo met Antonio Gramsci, the intellectual leader of the Italian Communist Party.  Umberto joined Mussolini’s Fascist Party and became moderately wealthy as a banker.  Amedeo lived simply and put all his money into buying books for the fellow trolley drivers that he was teaching how to read.  In 1925, the rift was complete upon the occasion of the baptism of Umberto’s son, Stelio.  Umberto snubbed Amedeo and chose his wife’s teenage brother to be the child’s godfather.

In April of 1945, the Yugoslav Army arrives in Trieste as the retreating German army vacates the city.  A wave of revenge killings begins, focused on Fascists and Nazi collaborators.  Amedeo learns that Umberto is targeted.  He must decide whether and, if so, how to protect his brother, knowing full well that by intervening he will put his own life at risk.

I’ve been working on this novel now for a year, on and off, stealing time between the consulting projects that constitute my “day job.”  Thanks to my writing group, I’ve made tremendous progress.  Along the way, I’ve identified a number of questions I can’t answer without additional research in Trieste — places, sights and sounds, historical details.  In a separate post, I report on the Grants for Artist Projects (GAP) grant I received from Seattle’s Artist Trust to support that research.

I’ve also put a lot of time into understanding the literary history of Trieste, particularly the influence of D’Annunzio, Gramsci, James Joyce and Italo Svevo on Umberto and Amedeo.

A shooting scene took me away from the keyboard for a few hours.  I had to learn about World War II weapons, the details of bullet wounds, and first aid practices of the period.  I even did a round of test firing to make sure the way I imagined the scene has some realism.

I’m at a point now where I’m submitting excerpts to professional journals and writing contests.  For a former marketing guy, this work amounts to test marketing.

As for the project as a whole?  I’ve never had so much fun in my life.

Separately, the essay “Telling Him” was a finalist in the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association annual writing contest, also in the Personal Essay category.

A big thank you to Writer’s Digest and PNWA for operating these contests.  The PNWA program includes written feedback.  Every submission gets read, and the author gets written feedback from two judges.  That feedback has been incredibly helpful to me as I work on improving my craft.

Brain cancer.  Sixteen.

I come here several times a year.  Today’s occasion is what would be his 26^th birthday.  To me, it IS his 26^th birthday, and I celebrate the same way I did before his death, by baking him a cake, his favorite cake, yellow cake with a batch and a half of dark chocolate icing.  I come, I sit, I run my fingers over those letters.  On other occasions, I bring flowers, usually a single long-stemmed white rose.  On his birthday, I brink a big hunk of cake, on a plate, with a fork.

So today, I climb several flights of stairs between campus buildings to come to his bench.  When I first glimpse it, my eyes search for something left there.  Perhaps a bouquet of flowers.  I’ve found them before.  Today, I get to the bench and there’s nothing there.  I sing “Happy Birthday” in a quiet voice.

I put the cake down on the bench and then take a picture to document the occasion, just as I have all the other years I’ve been here.  Then I sit down, next to the cake, and say, “You better hurry up Andrew, it’s looking pretty good.”  Today I notice the extra-thick icing that had piled up in the middle of the cake, like a tsunami of dark chocolate just waiting for Andrew to engulf it. The slice is about a sixth of the cake.  I pick up the fork and pick up the plate and plunge the fork in and take a bite.  That’s kind of what I always do, kind of a joke between me and Andrew.  I swear a couple of times I’ve heard him howl in protest.

Today’s cake is scratch made, as usual, but I’d tried something different. I’d foolishly tried to make the cake a little better for you.  I used brown rice flour instead of regular baking flour.  That’s pretty crazy when you consider that the cake and the icing combined contain 4 cups of sugar, three eggs and two and a half sticks of butter.  What was I thinking?

The consequence was an extremely fragile cake.  Without the wheat, the cake didn’t have whatever regular flour provides to keep a cake together.  So it crumbled coming out of the cake pan.  The bottom half came out in pieces that I had to fit back together on the serving dish, like a jigsaw puzzle.

After pulverizing the bottom half, I had do to something different to get the other half out its pan.  Better than yanking it out of there.  I decided two pieces cut neatly would be better than 20, so I cut a line down the middle of it with a sharp-edged spatula and managed to lift two half-circles of cake out of the pan.  I dropped spoonfulls of icing onto the mosaic of the bottom half, hoping they would serve as spackle to keep the thing together. Then I lifted each half-circle of the top half in place and began to apply the icing.

The cake peeled off in layers when I tried to put icing on it.  Along the sides, gravity combined with the weight of the icing to pull the vertical surface of the cake away.  The insides then spilled out, like a sand castle whose innards have dried out.

I finally gave up trying to put icing on the sides and just piled it on top.  I spread it as carefully as I could and as slowly as I could, trying first a spatula and then a table knife.  Even then, I managed to create divots in the surface of the cake, craters that I’d then have to dump more icing onto in order to achieve a thickness that would stand spreading without grabbing the underlying cake surface and ripping it away.

When I tucked what I concluded to be the ugliest birthday cake in the world under a cake dome, I felt relieved, a weight off my shoulders, a stress I hadn’t anticipated.  I thought about throwing the whole thing away, but I knew Andrew would like it anyway.  Heck, if it had sugar and chocolate in it, it couldn’t be bad.  Whenever I got ready to cut him a slice, he would shout out, in as deep a voice as he could mister, “Cake!  Cake!”

I figured at worst he would laugh and say, gently, “Dad, you are such a dork.”

Sitting on the bench, eating my share of cake, I look around the campus.  I take a last bite, a classic Andrew forkful so huge my cheeks puff out like a chipmunk’s.  As I slowly chew, I stick the fork in the top of the cake and sit there.  When I swallow the last of my Andrew forkful, the taste of deep dark chocolate icing and the gritty feel of rice flour cake, I feel speechless, awkward. I force myself to say things out loud but they sound dorky and stupid to me.  I stop talking and just hold an image of Andrew in my mind.  His Dallas Cowboys ball cap. His loose, lanky, athletic body.  His wise smile.  The freckles across the bridge of his nose.

When it’s time to leave, I know I have to leave, yet there’s something that makes me want to stay.  And maybe it’s just to stay connected to Andrew, which is odd, because I feel connected to him no matter where I go.  But this is a special place.  I know this campus was a special place for him.  It was special because his friends were here.

A few minutes later, I’m driving off to an appointment in downtown Seattle. That half-eaten slice of cake is back there on the bench.  As I record the draft of this essay on my smartphone, my voice shakes.  I don’t feel any tears coming.  They came last night, as I thought about today, and after I’d baked this disastrous cake.  Today I just feel sad and kind of lonely, wanting my son with me.

Now here come the tears.

I think about Andrew’s friends, whether they are thinking about him today.  I know of one who came here for several years after his death.  She may still be doing it, I don’t know.  We haven’t been in contact for several years, though we’re friends on Facebook.  She would come to visit this bench on this day.  Most of those times, she saw a piece of yellow cake with dark chocolate icing and knew it was from me.

I learned that she’d been visiting when, a couple of years ago, I arrived at the bench in late October, a few days after the anniversary of his death.  Even from a distance I saw something under the bench.  A bouquet. As I approached, I saw something underneath the bouquet.  An envelope, sealed into a clear plastic bag.  Addressed to me.

She wrote some very sweet things about how much she cared for Andrew and how he had affected her life.  I called her a few days later to thank her.

Last year, I missed Andrew’s birthday.  I’d taken my mother back East for a family reunion. When I got back, I took Andrew a piece of cake.

As I drive, I think about him again, and where he might be.  I had a waking vision about 6 months after he died, that he’d been reborn, to a couple in Kansas.  Father named Andrew, possibly suffering with cancer himself.  And Andrew, in this rebirth, was given the name Daniel.  I think about Daniel and sometimes wonder what it might be like to bump into him.  Would I recognize him?  Would I see some vestige of Andrew in him?  Would he laugh?  Would he call me a dork?  I wonder what kind of kid he’d be like.  He’d be 9 right now.  A second grader?  Third grader? What kind of man will he grow up to be?

And will he ever laugh at his father, and call him a dork?  Would his mother ever attempt a birthday cake made with brown rice flour?

I come back to Andrew.  I wonder what he would be like at 26.  10 years later.  What kind of a man would he be?  What kind of a life would he be leading?  Where would he be living?  How close would we be?

I want him very close.  I want him next to me, I want him riding in the car with me.  I want him going on hikes with me.  I want him going to a ski hill somewhere, him on his swoopy snowboard, carving elegant turns and jumping, me on my pointy old K2 Merlin 4s, running the groomers or watching Andrew in the half-pipe.

I want to hear him laughing at me. Laughing with me might be better but I’ll take laughing at me, for being such a dork with this cake, trying to make it better with rice flour, how ridiculous.  I just want to hear his laugh.

I just want to hear his laugh.

My new Apple Monkey Knuckle

In less than an hour, I’m standing at the Genius Bar of the closest Apple Store, at Southcenter Mall.  I’m assigned to Lauren, a tall young woman with light freckles and a radically angled hair style who greets me with a confident smile.  She grabs a spare charger and we fire up my machine to diagnose my system.  Yep, the charger is dead.  And oh by the way, your original battery has lost some of its holding capacity, you might want to consider a new one.

And what’s going on with the corner of that typing surface?  She points at the spot where my right wrist usually rests and sure enough there’s a chip and a crack.  That’s a defective part, we can replace it.  No charge.  Seriously?  Yes, let me check my tech schedule.  There, we can have that housing kit installed in half an hour.  Will that work?  And just so you know, the kit includes the top case, the keyboard, and the bezel around the display.

Half an hour later, I walk out of there with my four-year-old MacBook looking brand new, with a new battery and new charger.  I also have a new word.  If you have a MacBook, there’s a part that slides in and out of the charger, that has the actual plug prongs on it.  It’s called a monkey knuckle.  All for $145.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s knuckle.

Thank you, Lauren, thank you, Apple.  I bought my first Macintosh in 1984, have owned and used Macs ever since with deviations into DOS land only when required by an employer, and will likely have a Mac around well into the future.

On March 26, we graduate, and you’re invited.  From 1 to 4 pm Saturday, each of us will have 6 minutes to regale you with our poetry, prose and performance.  It’s a wonderful mix of voices.  The place will be Elliott Bay Books in Capitol Hill.  Please RSVP to  Samantha Shockley, Program Assistant, samantha@artisttrust.org or 206/467-8734 x10, (toll-free) 1/866/218-7878

When I was a junior at Aragon High School in San Mateo, CA, Mr. Franceschi called me in to talk about college. My PSAT scores were good, my grades were pretty good, but I hadn’t given any thought to college.  He asked me to name a handful of schools I might like.

“Stanford,” I said.

Here’s the real reason why: A few days earlier I’d seen a front page story in the San Mateo Times reporting a student strike at Stanford.  I don’t remember the reason for the strike.  I do remember the aerial photograph of rooftops full of people.  Naked people.

I wound up going there.  Twice.

But Mr. Franceschi laughed when I said Stanford.  “No way, kid, your grades aren’t good enough.”

I don’t remember feeling offended, and agreed to a battery of tests to figure out what sort of career I might be interested in, a process that he believed might help me choose among the Cal State University campuses or, if I was lucky, a University of California school.

His assessment:  My interests and abilities matched up most closely with sales executives and ministers.

I thought, “Those can’t be more different.”

Well, he was right.  It took me years to realize that both are about delivering messages designed to influence behavior.  Consider the job title “evangelist” that started showing up on Silicon Valley business cards in the 80s.

What made me uncomfortable back then was the stereotype of preachers who push doctrine and warn of punishments.  The stereotypical salesman pushes information about features and provides incentive by lowering price.  Neither approach is either personal or positive, and both generally fail in the long run.

As it turned out, my business career took me pretty close to that sales executive role Mr. Franceschi posited.  I’ve done brand marketing and business development, in big companies and startups.  I’ve literally gone door-to-door selling when I started my own publishing company and I’ve also spent millions on television advertising trying to get people to buy another bag of Fritos.

Regardless of the medium, whether it’s social network marketing, television advertising or guerilla marketing, I learned early to ask, “Will my message break through the marketing clutter to get attention and change behavior?”

More important than the medium is the message.  Does it communicate a benefit from using the product or service offered?  Does it suggest some understanding of the prospect’s real situation?  In those cases where the desired change in behavior might be complex, does the communication offer an easy way to begin?

Same with preaching.  I’m not super religious, but there have been times in my life when I’ve attended some sort of church service, ranging from High Catholic to Buddhist.  The messages that resonated, and the ideas I internalized, came from priests or monks who could talk TO me, not at me.  The best was a Buddhist monk, who made me laugh when he started laughing about the insanity of anger.  “Anger serves no useful purpose whatsoever.  And if you respond to an angry person by getting angry yourself, all you’re doing is throwing gasoline on a fire.”

That monk’s core teaching was about compassion.  Compassion is all about putting yourself in the other person’s situation.  In the case of an angry person, that person is generally suffering.  So rather than react to the anger, seek to understand the suffering.  You can sometimes find a way to reduce that suffering, and thereby reduce the person’s anger.  Both of you benefit.

The parallel with marketing is being customer-centric.  Putting yourself in your customer’s situation.  Seek to understand the wants and needs (and, yes, their pain).  And then building your business strategy around that.

Today, this confluence of marketing and ministry feels vaguely uncomfortable.  I feel immensely at ease developing marketing strategies for businesses and non-profits.  I don’t feel quite so comfortable sharing my personal and spiritual experiences in ways that might influence the behavior of others.  I believe that telling my story will benefit others, and it’s that belief that often helped me get through the most difficult times writing my book, Free the Sorrow:  A Grieving Father Breaks the Death Grip of Anger.

But to stand up in front of a crowd and deliver a short talk is another matter.  I have no fear of public speaking, I’m just not clear yet on what to say and how to say it in ten minutes so that it’s worthwhile for those people to listen.

I’m working on it.

I thought about all the senses, and how each one could be stimulated to facilitate the preparation for prayer:

Hearing:  The soothing background sounds of a running stream or ocean surf, or beautiful music, or Gregorian chants.

Smell:  A calming incense blend.

Sight:  Spiritual images, like the Christian cross or the many faces of Buddha.

Touch:  A rosary, a prayer shawl or a yarmulke, something tangible to ground you.

Taste:  A sip of something – wine, tea, water – whatever will mark that process of transition.

I was well on my way to crafting a really elaborate ritual and personal spiritual space when I remembered the one thing that really matters:  Get down on your knees.  I decided to work on making prayer a habit, and later develop my personalized prayer space and accompanying ritual.

Meanwhile, I’ll keep my chair setup, though I might buy a small side table to use instead of the chair.

And I’ve created a small travel kit, something I can bring with me that will help me mentally shift into prayer mode by providing what I might call spiritual guard rails:  A two-inch rosewood Buddha, laughing.  A votive candle.  A matchbook. I can tuck these into a Ziploc bag and toss it into my suitcase or duffel or backpack and always – along with my knees — have a set of spiritual beacons handy that can guide me into that magical space we call prayer.

How do you move yourself into your mental and emotional prayer zone?

If you found this blog entry helpful or interesting, please email a link to two friends.  It’s a small thing, but the more we can spread good thoughts, the better for all of us.

So get down on your knees.  But make it as comfortable as you can, because in my experience, the longer you can stay in it, the better.  I take off my shoes, then kneel and put a yoga bolster between my ankles and my butt.  It’s not perfect, but it’s comfortable enough that I can concentrate on the praying and not on the discomfort I’m feeling.

Next, talk out loud.  Just as singing in your car along with the radio feels different from following the tune in your head, praying out loud feels different from just thinking.  My experience was that speaking certain things out loud for the first time proved tremendously liberating.  I’d thought about them, even written about them, for years, but it wasn’t until I spoke them out loud that I felt that shift.

Last, be polite.  This is related to practicing humility, but, for me, it reflects the fact that I don’t really know what’s happening, why this is working for me.  A case could be made that there’s a placebo effect – that just believing prayer can help has created the outcome I wanted.  I believe there’s more to that, that it’s Andrew sitting there and listening to me.  But it could also be the case that Andrew has simply positioned himself as an intermediary to God or Buddha or The Universe to make it easier for me to speak.  Or that the deity has used Andrew as an avatar on my behalf.

Either way, it’s good to be polite, or at least mindful of being courteous and respectful, even if what you need to say might not sound particularly nice.

If to no one else, at least be kind to yourself.  This is a lesson I often fail to remember.  Be kind to yourself.  Accept yourself as a human being, flaws and all, and celebrate what you do have.  Celebrate the fact that you have the courage to pray.

If you found this blog entry helpful in any way, please leave a comment for others to see or email a link to two friends.  It’s a small thing, but the more we can spread good thoughts, the better for all of us.