Zen and the art of karaoke survival

Folks dancing at the party.

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I must have spent a good 15 minutes searching Google just now, and couldn’t discover the average age of first-time karaoke use.

I just experienced my first time. I’m nearly 52. I wish I could tell you it was magical.

I know singing in your car and singing in the shower are both considered to be karaoke gateway drugs. And while I’m often guilty of both of the former activities, I’d never before succumbed to peer pressure to take the stage. My son is the performer in the family. I just sit and type stories.

And I pray karaoke is not addictive, because I very nearly died from trying it just once. Then, either numbed or emboldened, I tried it a second time. I don’t remember too much after that.

We were at a 1970s-themed engagement party for one of my wife’s coworkers. The crowd at Hidden Dunes had been dancing to Bee Gees songs and other appropriately kitschy tunes, like “Lady Marmalade” (the version by LaBelle, 1974) until DJ Mike announced it was time to sing.

People dressed in glittery stretch pants and unbuttoned silk shirts clutched champagne flutes and sang “(Sittin’ on the) Dock of the Bay” (1967), “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” (1976), and “Annie’s Song (You Fill Up My Senses)” (1974). And you could tell they were accomplished cover artists — doing a little dance, playing to the audience, barely watching the video screen for lyric prompts.

While most of the crowd had embraced the disco style, I was wearing a David Bowie T-shirt. The cover to “Low” (1977). Bowie, who died in January, is my greatest musical idol. I learned to pay attention to songs after hearing a noisy cassette recording of a Bowie performance taped from an old TV. The song was “Space Oddity.” The rest is legend.

What I’m saying is, if I was ever going to sing in public it would have to be a Bowie song. Also, I was pretty sure alcohol would have to be applied liberally beforehand. But I was not drinking and had no intention of taking the mic, just enjoying the people with more self-confidence who did so.

Then DJ Mike came to our table and asked me what I was going to sing. I shook my head and grinned. “Nothing,” I said. He returned to his gear and started a chant of my name. The crowd joined in. My wife gave me a smile.

Something in my brain snapped. In retrospect, that might be how horror movies start.



Like a blurry Bigfoot photo.

I opened with “Fame” (1975), my feet shifting nervously, my hands in my pockets. I saw Bowie do “Fame” twice — the 1987 Glass Spider Tour in New Orleans and the 1990 Sound+Vision Tour in Pensacola. I tried to keep in mind that he often mixed up lyrics when performing, so I shouldn’t worry about it.

Then the darkness closed in. All I recall is the video screen, the words slowly changing color before my eyes as the song progressed. I had no sense of time or of the rest of the room, or even the sound of the crowd behind the rumbling in my head.

And then it was over, people applauded, my wife grinned ear-to-ear, and I started toward our table.

“What’s your second one?” DJ Mike asked. “Golden Years?”

I froze. The crowd chanted. I realized people had been dancing while I sang.

How could I not?

The music started, a rolling guitar decrescendo that then built and built into that Carlos Alomar funk. Suddenly, a woman I’d never seen before grabbed my right arm, pressed herself close and yelled into my face — something like “I can’t help it! This is my favorite!” — and started singing along.

No offense to the lady is intended, but I thought, “So much for ‘nothing’s gonna touch you in these golden years.’” I lost the rhythm. I stumbled on lyrics I’ve sung in my car a million times. I remember looking at my wife and mouthing “Help?” She shook her head. I  was on my own.

I kept waiting for the roadies to peel the woman off of me like you see at the concerts. They never came, but honestly I was still experiencing tunnel vision, one misfiring neuron short of an out-of-body experience.

So I soldiered through. There’s a secret I’ve learned that applies to just about any situation: Give it time, and it will pass. Find your center, which for me at the moment was a video screen with color-changing lyrics on it.

You, too, can survive karaoke.

Peace.

Flashback Friday: Digressions in infinite complications

(The following was first published in The News Herald on Sunday, April 29, 2001.)

She needed a spoon for her cereal, but none were clean, so she washed all of the dishes, wiped down the counter tops, swept the floor, mopped, noticed dirt on the baseboards and instead of washing them pulled them off the wall and sanded the paint off of them, refinished them, reattached them to the wall, which she suddenly realized needed a new coat of paint in a different color so she went to Wal-Mart, where she bought paint and brushes, and came back home to paint the dining room (and living room and bathroom) walls — never having paused for breakfast.

Did anybody see where that rabbit ran off to?

She wanted to re-seed bare spots in the lawn, so she bought seed, bags of top soil and cow compost, flowering bedding plants, decorative trimming bricks, and went to find a hoe in the shed, but the shed was in disarray so she pulled everything out of it and stacked boxes and junk for a trip to the dump, and stacked other items for Goodwill, then organized the shed and realized that the hoe was not in the shed at all but rather on the side of the house where our spring garden is usually planted but where pine straw was still heavy on the ground, needing to be raked, so she raked the straw into trashcans that also would be carried to the dump — never having got around to seeding the lawn.

Could someone help us catch these wild geese?

She wanted to relax before bedtime with the latest Left Behind book, but the dog had gotten hair on the bed, so she stripped the comforter and sheets and started a load of wash and folded clothes that were in the drier and went to put them away, but the drawers were full of winter clothes so she sorted the winter clothes — setting many aside for donation — and put the remainder in a tote that wouldn't fit into the closet until the closet was sorted — setting several items aside, again, for donation — and by this time the comforter and sheets had been washed and dried so she made the bed and went to sleep — never having cracked open the book.

But I digress.

Getting to the point (if there is one): The walls would not be repainted now if I had run the dishwasher the night before, as I had promised; the shed would not be cleaned if I had put away the hoe; the winter clothes and closets might not be sorted yet, if I had not played with the dog on the bed.

What would she do without me?

The view from the back seat

(This is my Undercurrents column for The News Herald this week.)

PANAMA CITY BEACH — It has been a week of highs and lows, as life tends to be — and pretty clearly illustrated, at least in part, by the perspectives attained according to where I sat in a moving vehicle.

Buckle up.

Saturday, my wife and I drove to Tallahassee to be with our daughter for her birthday, then traveled with her and her boyfriend to Thomasville, Ga., for a daytrip. The old downtown has been revitalized with boutiques, restaurants, a theater, a bookstore, a record shop — even a cupcakery and a fudge shop. We strolled the brick and concrete walks, sampled the local flavors, admired the old architecture. We laughed a lot.

I rode in the front passenger’s seat with my teeth clenched as my daughter’s boyfriend drove like he was auditioning for “Fast & Furious 8.” At one point, a piece of brown cardboard blown into the highway from the right caused him to swerve — I had seen it coming, but he thought it was an animal.

Sunday, we attended the wedding of my son’s best friend in Jacksonville; it took place at a waterside venue, by an old Florida woodframe house under oak trees strung with white lights. Bride and groom were funny and beautiful, and the event felt like a family reunion — everyone was genuinely happy to see everyone else. Afterward came dining, dancing (yes, even me), speeches, and tears of joy all around. My son caught the garter.

I drove most of the way there, but was relegated to the back seat for the trip home, sleeping the sleep of the just, the exhausted, the old. I’m not built for snoozing in a Corolla, but I managed. Pulling back into Tallahassee near midnight was like rolling into a dream — the streets were vaguely familiar, just turned the wrong ways and strangely lit, and even my daughter had trouble recognizing them.

“I’ve never come into town from this direction at night,” she explained.

We next jaunted to Pensacola, where I visited my father in the hospital and then traveled with him to Atmore, Ala., where he was moving for physical therapy. On that trip, I took the back seat again as my wife drove and Dad perched in the front passenger seat. I joked about being the backseat driver, then tried to give my wife directions. Dad chuckled and looked out the window.

That’s when it finally struck me and the mental airbags deployed.

I thought of my own children, of their years in the back seat, looking forward and reading my temper or humor by the bulge of a grinning cheek, set of a clenched jaw, or crinkle of the skin at the corner of my eye. Watching my hairline recede from the center outward.

I couldn’t tell you how many thousands of roadtrips I’ve taken with my father over the decades, covering hundreds of thousands of miles. Short hops to the grocery store, to church, to school, to Grandma’s  house and a million other places. Longer slogs to Orlando, or Cleveland, or Stone Mountain or wherever.

And I couldn’t begin to guess how often I saw him from a similar angle as I was growing up — sitting in the back seat and watching him scan the road as he drove or rode shotgun with someone else. Yet, I had never seen him from quite this perspective ever before. Exhausted, weak, at the mercy of a body and brain suffering from brutal and random tribulation.

Memories and that moment in time collided, the weight of those intervening decades like a yoke on my back, and I wondered what it must be like for him, relegated for a time to being a backseat passenger in his own life.

My advice is to take the wheel while you can, but from time to time, be willing to occupy a back seat and view the world from that perspective. Remind yourself how it feels to follow, to have to trust another’s ability to navigate the miles of rough road ahead.

And don’t forget to buckle up.

Peace.

Throwback Thursday: Not Fade Away

(This column originally published in The News Herald on Sunday, November 14, 2010)

Not fade away: Connecting across time and space

Surrounded and bolstered by kindred spirits on Thursday night, Wewahitchka-based author Michael Lister talked about the sacred calling of the storyteller. He used the word “shaman” to convey the mystical connection between the teller and the listener.

Like an alchemical equation seeking balance, the work birthed in the act of creating art can’t reach maturity until the work is interpreted. Otherwise creation is the silence in the forest when a tree falls and no one is there to hear it.

It’s the sound of one hand clapping.

Michael’s words, as usual, started me thinking. In particular, I recalled a few events of the past week where the things people said (or wrote) and the things I heard (or read) connected with memory to
create new meaning. You never know what people will say, or how the things they say will stick with you and bubble to the surface of your thoughts.

A couple of examples:
I visited the set of “A Doll’s House” on the Amelia Center Theater stage at Gulf Coast Community College this week. Decorated for Christmas, the lights and baubles stood in stark contrast to the dull walls and furnishings in shades of brown. It looked like a scene out of “A Christmas Story.”

The play is set in 1950s Chicago, and the short sequence I viewed made me think about those folks on our Squall Line who want their country back — one of whom even went so far this week to type on his or her computer that “The 1950s was a better time.”

On stage, the husband teased his wife with $10 bills that she greedily snatched from him, one by one, and promised to spend wisely. He called her pet names and spoke in soothing tones, making sure she understood her place and function in his world.

I was reminded of an early Saturday morning recently, when an older man joked about spending his entire “allowance” on yard sales. He circled among some tables stacked with colorful trinkets and clothing, asking silly questions and flirting with the ladies at the sale. Suddenly, he grew quiet.

“I was married three times,” this total stranger said to me, his breath misting in the morning cold. “I left the first one, the second one left me, and the third died. She was the only one who ever said she loved me. She was the only one I ever loved.”

He cleared a lump in his throat and pointed at a coffee maker designed for one person.

“Is that real or a toy?” he said, and I told him I believed that it was real.

He bought it and drove away alone.
Peace.

Reflections on a week of import

Father and Son

PANAMA CITY BEACH — My son, Nathan, turned 27 earlier this week. I don’t know about how you respond to the passage of such dates, but that day made me look back at myself at 27 and try to imagine where I thought life would take me then.

I turned 27 in 1991, just a month after Nathan’s third birthday and couple of months before my daughter was born. I was back in college after several years of working for a retail outlet — on my way to a degree in Journalism, finally, and working freelance for a couple of local publications to help cover the bills.

Two years later, I would be hired by The News Herald and move my little family to Panama City. But in ’91, we had a spitz puppy named Everest and lived in a house owned by my mother, and I had dreams of making it as a reporter and novelist.

I still do.

Looking at my 51st birthday looming now, it would be easy to say the best days are in the past and to worry what the future holds. But I have to say, we (as a family) have weathered some dark days in the interim, and we hope for some great ones still to come.

As I sit here, writing this on the day my latest novel begins its serialized release on Amazon Kindle, I know that there are still stories to tell — indeed, more than I will ever have time to write down — still milestones to reach and wonders to witness. The marriage of children and birth of grandchildren, for instance. The next laugh at a lunch table.

I have more close friends today than at any time since high school. I have great expectations for my children, and a certain assurance that they have acquired the skills and strengths they will need to flourish even when I’m gone.

At 27, things were just getting started and I was struggling to find my way. At nearly 51, though some days can make me feel my age, I still have a sense that things are just getting started. I still struggle, still have worries. But most days the path is there, if I take a moment to see it.

How about you? Are you finding your path? Can you look back and see the trajectory that brought you here?

Peace.

Check out Tony’s latest fiction by visiting Facebook.com/TheCalibanCycle for details.

Ode to a morning commute

PANAMA CITY — She stretched out her arms like an osprey riding an updraft, and I wished I could have taken her photo.

I was topping the rise of the Hathaway Bridge earlier this week when it happened. Driving in the center lane, on my way in to the office on a cold morning. Listening to jazz on WKGC. Thinking about all of the things that needed to be done that day and in the days and weeks to come.

The water of St. Andrew Bay was dark, a bit choppy, but sunlight sparkled on the ripples. On warmer days, my morning crossing coincides with a handful of joggers, walkers and bikers using the bridge’s pedestrian lane. This morning, there was only one.

She was bundled up, with a black jacket and gloves, bicycling up the curve of the bridge. Dark hair whipped in the offshore wind. I spotted her just as she topped the rise — morning sun lighting the water beyond her, she became a silhouette. She sat up straight and raised her arms out to her side slowly, with the grace of a dancer prolonging the movement.

I couldn’t see her face, but I imagined her smiling at the sense of accomplishment, of freedom, of flight. The moment lasted only seconds, but the image remains.

The old Hathaway Bridge couldn’t have supplied that moment. It seemed more often like a barrier than a connector. Its narrow lanes and bottleneck approaches slowed traffic to such an extent that many people avoided crossing it unless absolutely necessary. There really was a “beach” and “town” separation then, based on accessibility, that doesn’t exist any more.

(Today’s “us” and “them” attitudes are based on other things, I think. Although, with construction on the east side flyover looming, that bottleneck is no doubt going to return until the work is done.)

We moved from the town side to the beach side in 2012, and the Hathaway has become part of the day. Depending on assignments, I may cross it multiple times in a day, and it seldom fails to give me an image to ponder.

Steam rising from the power plant to the north, or smoke from a controlled burn. Fishermen approaching as close as they dare to the Navy base. A paddlewheel cruise, or a line of personal watercraft to the south. Para-surfers and water-jet riders off Carl Gray Park.

My favorite memory of the old bridge dates from when my daughter was a toddler. Any time we crossed the Hathaway, she would try to hum along with the sound of our tires on the metal grating at the center of the strand. It never failed to make me smile, hearing that sound issue from the back seat.

My favorite memory (so far) of the new bridge is sighting a bald eagle perched on the southern rail, regarding the passing traffic with a wary eye. I also enjoy seeing the crowds line the span with U.S. flags to welcome the Wounded Warriors motorcade when they visit.

In 2011, I shot video of local musician JoshBrowning singing his original song, “The Hathaway,” at Beck’s Underground, a music venue in town that closed later that same year. Josh sang about leaving his troubles behind on one side of the bridge, and finding everything he loved on the other.

Like topping the rise on a cold morning and drifting into the updraft of a brand new day.

Peace.

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This was my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.

Taking candy from strangers

PANAMA  CITY — My parents taught me never to take candy from strangers. My children heard the same rule as they were growing up.

Monday, I broke that age-old imperative.

Entering the downtown Post Office, I joined a queue of people waiting for their chance to do business with one of the two clerks. Up ahead, I saw an older gentleman in a denim shirt and cap shaking a woman’s hand. She had a confused expression, and I saw him pass something to her during the handshake.

He moved on to the person ahead of her in line, and she opened her right palm to examine the mint candies he had given her. Little white-and-red swirls of  sugar wrapped in cellophane.

I wondered then if she was leery of accepting candy from a stranger, and I counted myself lucky to be entering behind him so I didn’t have to make that same decision.

“May I shake your hand?” I heard him ask the person in front of her. They shook hands, and he passed some more candy in the handshake.

He continued in this way to the front of the line, then spoke to the clerks, who appeared to know him. He turned to a young man who had stepped out of the line when a third clerk appeared to ask if anyone was there for General Delivery. He asked if he could shake the young man’s hand, but the guy held up a mint and said, “You did already, thank you.”

I saw the old man notice me at the back of the line, then. He started my way, and I wondered what my response would be when he asked. I hoped nothing smart-alecky would erupt, unbidden, out of my mouth. I looked up at the boxes wrapped in shiny Christmas paper on the walls and part of me hoped he would just bypass me.

But he rounded the kiosk of Priority Mail envelopes and extended his right hand. I spotted the candy wrappers peeking out.

“May I shake your hand?” he asked in an accent from the woods where I grew up.

“Sure,” I said. He gave my right hand a friendly tug, pressing two pieces of candy into my palm as he did so. I said thank you, then I asked how he was doing.

He almost turned away, then he looked up at me from under the bill of his cap.

“Not so great, if I’m still here and not in heaven,” he said. “I’m ready to go.”

I smiled as if I understood, but my true emotions were conflicted. I looked at the candy in my hand, then back at him as he opened the door and stepped through, shaking his head and repeating, “I am ready to go.”

It occurred to me to question if one should eat candy that came from a man who’s anticipating the afterlife so eagerly. But I unwrapped the cellophane and popped a piece in my mouth anyway.

It was sweet, and minty, and smelled like Christmas days visiting my great-grandfather. He always kept mints in the house — old-fashioned ones that melted in your mouth. And then I recalled this older fellow at Century First Baptist Church who would give the kids at the evening service mints or butterscotches when I was little. I hadn’t thought about that for a long time, and it was a sweet recollection.

I looked over my shoulder and saw the old man talking to someone in the main lobby, reaching out to shake hands.

Some days, like this old guy, I’m not doing so great. But I’m not yet ready to go. And so long as strangers can still offer a handshake, a smile, a gentle word — maybe even a candy mint — I’m not sure I should be in any great hurry.

Maybe, at my age, it’s okay to take candy from strangers. Maybe, in specific circumstances, we should be willing to take the chance.

Or maybe all of us in the Post Office that morning just got lucky and shared a little Christmas miracle.

Peace. 

Seeing, believing more closely related than you know

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I wasn’t winking at you, if that’s what you thought as we passed in the store this week. Honest.

I was just testing my vision. I thought something was wrong with my right eye.

It happened when I was helping my son locate the correct windshield wipers for his car, and pulled my glasses from my jacket pocket so I could read the guidebook attached to the store shelf. With my glasses on, nothing came into focus — in fact, my sight was worse with them on.

I closed my left eye, and my right seemed useless, just a blur. I closed my right eye — and suddenly I could see clearly with my left one. With both eyes open, though, everything once more became a blur.

“Something’s wrong with my eye,” I said, and I must admit to a kernel of worry; I read and write for a living and for fun, and the prospect of a vision issue unsettled me.

I closed the right eye and used the left one, aided by the glasses, to find the windshield wipers Nathan needed. Then I told him we should find his mom, who was wandering around elsewhere in the store, so I could tell her about my vision problem.

As we walked through the aisles, I kept putting on my glasses — all a blur — and taking them off again, trying to focus with and without them, closing one eye and then the other. Winking, blinking, and nodding. Yep, my right eye was definitely messed up.

Here’s the Zen question that occurred to me then: If seeing is believing, then what is not-seeing?

I found my wife and told her the story I just told you, and she gave me a blank look, like she suspected I was punking her. I put on the glasses to demonstrate, and did the right-eye-shut test again, and again, only my left eye could focus.

“I think I see the problem,” my wife said as she poked her finger through the empty frame where a lens should have been and touched the lid of my closed right eye.

Immediately, I reached into my jacket pocket and found the missing lens.

“You’re lucky I’m a medical professional,” she said. “I can say with some confidence that you are not having a stroke.”

She laughed, and added that she couldn’t wait to tell this story to everybody she works with. I won’t tell you which body part her sister laughed off when she heard the story.

In my defense, our son didn’t notice the missing lens either. But that’s just because I suspect he’s as oblivious as I am. Besides, just how was I supposed to know there was something wrong with my glasses if I couldn’t see them?

That’s got to be at least as understandable as the guy who thought his family was giving him the silent treatment when, in fact, his hearing aid battery had died. (For the record, that was not me.)

From this perspective, seeing and believing became synonymous. And believing I couldn’t see made me blinder than ever.

I’m pretty sure there’s a useful life lesson in there somewhere, but it’s probably so obvious that I’m overlooking it.

Peace.

Rebel, rebel: The artist as agent of chaos

PANAMA CITY — I spent some time last Friday drawing on a wall at Floriopolis, the Beck Avenue gallery operated by artist Heather Parker. I had her permission — in fact, she invited me to do so — but something about applying a pen to the white wall (even though it was inside an art gallery) seemed like an act of rebellion.

Maybe that says something about my comfort level as a rebel.

The day prior, I interviewed Olga Guy, an artist based at CityArts Cooperative, who told me a story about painting her bedroom walls and doors as a teenager, much to her mother’s chagrin. (See this story to learn how that worked out for her.)

Drawing on Heather’s wall didn’t feel like graffiti. I didn’t have a statement to make. And while convention was being flouted, authority was not. Still, I think that’s what art is, at least the way my mind interprets it: A fundamental act of rebellion.

Against the mundane, the routine. Against the merciless march of time. Sometimes afflicting the comfortable, sometimes comforting the afflicted.

Follow me, here, because art can be a lot of things. An attempt to express divinity. To faithfully capture and reproduce a moment. To reveal emotion or provoke social change. To find patterns and draw order out of chaos, or to express chaos. It can even be as simple as a “pretty picture.”

And yet, all of this is rebellious. The act of creation presupposes that transitory creatures like us — who live and die in such a short span — have something of lasting meaning to contribute. That we defy the universe and the mortal constrictions it places on us.

We leave a message — a thought, a sound, an image, a performance — to be read, or listened to, or viewed by a stranger in another place and time, interpreted and remembered. We break the laws of physics every time we make something — or maybe we prove the theories of quantum entanglement by having an impact across space and time.

It’s a conundrum.

Art can be the product of experimentation, the result of inspiration (and, in turn, it can be inspiring to others). It is forward thinking — I will not be here tomorrow, but this is what I had to offer today — and thus it becomes disruptive, transformative for the creator as well as the viewer.

It’s also like the definition of sound: Unless someone sees it, reads it, hears it, then it’s not really communication. For artists, who most often labor in private, the patron’s eye (or ear) keeps them from feeling like a tree falling in a forest when no one’s around.

In coming weeks, you’ll meet a parade of local artists — painters, jewelers, dancers, musicians, writers and more — on these pages and at PanamaCity.com, as we begin an ongoing series we’re calling “Artist’s Touch.” I hope you’ll join me us we get to know the area’s creative spirits, examine the forms their work takes, and celebrate the rebels in our midst.

Peace.

Off the grid, on my mind

Photo by Jessica Simmons

HALF MOON KAY — Standing in cool sea water so blue and clear it looked like a swimming pool, with soft white sand under my feet and a towering thunderhead on the horizon dropping a sheet of rain against the blue sky, I could sense how far off the grid I was.

My phone, which has become both a lifeline and a distraction in recent years, was in a stateroom on the cruise ship that had brought me to this place with my family. It had not been employed for a few days, though my daughter continued using her phone for taking photos and keeping up with the time.

For a week, I did not surf the web, update Facebook, post to Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or any of the other social media that sucks away my moments. I didn’t send or receive a single text or a phone call. Because I’ve stopped wearing a watch (trusting my phone to carry that burden) I didn’t even know what time it was for most of the journey.

And I plopped down in the water, felt the sun drying salt on my face, and knew it was all good.

No sooner had we returned to port and “civilization,” than all of us turned our eyes to our phones and tried to catch up on all we had missed. The car ride back home was quiet as everyone (except the driver) busily reconnected with their cyber lives, myself included.

Just a few years ago, I was one of those Luddites who thought he would never need a cell phone. Then I thought I would never need one that allowed me to text messages rather than place calls (I still would rather talk to you than trade half-conversations via text). Then I thought I would never need a “smart” phone.

I was wrong about all of that. It’s a necessity in the multi-media business, and has become so in private life, where I’ve been known to work myself into a tizzy (use of that word proves I’m old) if my wife or children don’t respond to repeated attempts to reach them by call or text in the space of an hour or so. Not to mention being able to watch videos, listen to music, take HD photos, talk via Facetime and so forth.

But for a week, it didn’t matter what TV shows I missed (my DVR was saving them for me anyway), or what breaking news I caught later in the day. I wasn’t checking my phone to ensure I hadn’t missed someone’s message or email. Time was only important when dinner was approaching or to be sure we were back from an excursion before the ship sailed.

The world, as I experienced it, slowed down. It was quieter. I could take my time with something, relish a moment rather than trying to snap a selfie in the midst of it. (My daughter, however, took more than 250 photos on her phone, and my wife shot nearly as many on her camera, so the trip was still well documented. I don’t mean my comments here to devalue their effort.)

I read a book and a bunch of old comics I took on the trip. I watched the deep blue sea drift by. I spoke to strangers, helped my family/team win a trivia contest, held hands with my wife as we walked the streets of Nassau, joked with my kids. We made midnight visits to the buffet or to get ice cream.

But best of all, being off the grid gave us each other’s undivided attention, and provided me the chance to look them in the eyes and tell them how much they mean to me, and how wonderful it was to be with them on this adventure and in this life.

Peace.

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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.)

Cocktail Hour shares blog

When Bill Roorbach was in town for BooksAlive recently, he read and enjoyed a column of mine about the mad creative process I enjoyed on a long ride home from Birmingham. I told him it was a version of a blog entry, greatly simplified for the paper, and he asked permission to reprint it on his blog. I sent him a silly photo and an amalgamated version of the blog and column.

He posted it today.

Thanks, Bill!

I am the Night

My friend, Jayson Kretzer, is an artist. He did the cover of DRAGON RISING. He has begun doing "warmup sketches" every couple of days based on the Twitter handles of his followers. The first one he did was inspired by writer Jen Foehner Wells' Lovecraftian nickname:

"Jenthulhu." Awesome, right?

Today, I was blessed to be the subject of his pen. Or at least, my Twitter name was: 

"MidnightOnMars." Get it?

I was about to ask Jayson which of these creatures represented me, when I realized that I am the night. I am a concept. A fact of Nature. A time and place. (At least, that is, my Twitter name is.)

Thanks, Jayson. You made my week.

The sky remains the same as ever

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I heard a haunting melody this week, a particularly atmospheric clip by the Japanese band MONO: “The Sky Remains the Same as Ever.” It fit the mood I was in, which was at least in part precipitated by the sky, itself.

Maybe I pay too much attention to the sky. When I walk our dogs at night, for instance, I watch the stars and the moon — which hasn’t yet caused me to fall down, though it has resulted in some epic stumbles.

But I also tend to associate certain skies with specific moments in my life.

Last Saturday, as I watched over some chicken breasts sizzling on our back porch grill, I sat back in a deck chair to enjoy the afternoon sunshine. The temperature was in the 70s, the sun was high and warm, the breeze in our shared courtyard just a gentle, cool suggestion.

The sky was a rich blue, cloudless, without a sense of depth. It made the tops of the houses and trees look like cardboard cutouts against a lighted diorama backdrop.

And the combination of details took me back in time.

First it brought me, as it so often does, to a morning almost exactly six years ago, standing in a front yard in Lynn Haven, making phone calls to friends to tell them the worst news one can share. The sky, the sun, the breeze were just like that. Such a lovely sky for so terrible a day.

Then I was back even further, to summer 1985 — more than a lifetime ago, if measured by the earlier memory — sitting on a green space in Gainesville, feeling sun on my face, scribbling notes in a journal, looking up at the endless blue dome overhead.

It was hotter that day, and my mood was restless, but the sky was exactly the same. The world below stood out in stark relief, and with it a sense that none of this was real.

When I got up from my chair to flip the chicken, I wondered about the passing of time and our innate ability to relive moments at the slightest provocation: a scent, a sound, the texture of a blanket, the flavor of a pie, a song playing in the background of a television commercial.

In our hearts and minds, all time is one. The past is always there, one step removed, and sometimes it feels more real than where and when we are now.

As I write this on Wednesday morning, a fog has lifted and formless gray clouds have obscured the blue above. Spanish moss sways in oak limbs still bare of leaves. The sun persists. It punches through the haze, turning the moss dark against the brighter firmament.

What will this day be remembered for, I wonder, and what will this sky recall in years to come?

Peace.

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(This is my Undercurrents column for this week at PanamaCity.com and in The News Herald.)

River Readings Photo Blog

Carrie Fioramanti talks about Mandalas and Meditation.

Heather Clements demonstrates hoop dancing.

Me sitting with a group of conference-goers who took me out to lunch.

The group without me. Thanks, guys!

The participants worked on a mandala throughout the day.

Panel on Mindfulness: Michael Lister, Lynn Wallace, Carrie Fioramanti, David Lloyd.

Aaron Bearden talks about being great. My notebook and mandala in the foreground.

Having a ball at New Year’s time

PANAMA CITY BEACH — There was a span of time during which we ushered in each new year with fireworks and a house full of kids. The open house reverberated inside and out, a statement to the energy and optimism of youth — as well as the influence of junk food, parlor games and comedy films.

New Year’s Eve has been quieter in recent years, a statement to the truism of the empty nest (though ours is not quite empty yet). Life goes on, kids grow up, and friends move in different directions — sometimes to far-flung cities, where they create their own annual traditions.

In anticipation of another quiet New Year’s Eve, and recognizing our lack of available fireworks, we have talked about going out to the Pier Park celebration this year, which would be our first visit to that particular madding crowd.

(Note that this was written a couple of days before the event, though it publishes a couple of days after it. Maybe you saw us there. Maybe we didn’t make it. If we did, I’ll let you know about it next week.)

It’s the sixth time Pier Park has held a New Year’s Eve event, and this year the fireworks will illuminate a second phase of the mall’s development, rising in a skeleton of steel on the north shoulder of U.S. 98. By this time next year, that part of Panama City Beach will be twice as bustling as it is today.

Little wonder that it looks like the city’s growing up, too, according to a friend who grew up here but recently moved to the Northwest. The old “tourist traps” have been replaced by an upside-down amusement center and a “beached” ocean liner, and the strip plazas by an open-air mall that is expanding even as we speak.

At least the beach is still accessible — and with the sunny weather we’ve had recently, it has been welcoming. I’ve seen people walking the shore, para-surfing and more.

Sunday, I was setting up a smoker grill in my front yard as out-of-state neighbors visiting for the holiday walked their pooch. I asked how their Christmas was, and they threw their hands in the air to indicate the blue sky and warm sunshine.

“It’s 20 degrees back home,” one of them said, and that was answer enough.

I suggested that, if they really wanted to make the folks back home jealous, they could always go to the beach and make sand angels — that’s what my daughter wanted to do on Christmas day.

I reflected then that we are ending 2013 with more sunny days than rainy ones, more grins than tears. We have made new friends, begun new traditions (and carried on a few of the old ones). I hope that, for each of us, the new year brings more of the same, as well as plenty of pleasant surprises.

Happy New Year!

Share Your Thoughts:

What are your hopes and aspirations for 2014? What memories of 2013 will you carry like treasures into the new year and beyond?

Unraveling a warm Christmas mystery

Tony and Lisa, circa 1971

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I have no earthly idea where the cowboy outfits came from, except that Santa Claus must have had his reasons. Maybe it was a phase. Maybe it was a grandmother’s idea.

Whatever the origin, it’s now a personal Christmas mystery.

Back when I could still count my age and have fingers left in reserve, my family of four lived in a small woodframe house off U.S. 29 in Century, Florida. At least a couple of Christmases, part of the wonderment discovered under the Christmas tree included a full cowboy costume in the style of Gene Autry and his generation of singing cowpokes.

Now, please understand, Gene Autry’s movies were a bit before even my time. But my favorite Christmas music was an album of songs featuring Gene on the cover in all of his Hollywood-cowboy glory, standing tall as a miniature sleigh and tiny reindeer flew about his kneecaps.

Maybe that explains the costuming. Hat, boots, a shirt that would make a country music star swoon. One year, there was a fringe vest included, but I think by then I was in my Bobby Sherman phase.

My sister, as seen in a photo from about 1971 that she recently posted on Facebook, got a corresponding cowgirl outfit. We were a matched set — and pretty pleased to be so, if the picture is as accurate an indication as I believe.

I remember wearing the costume around to visit the relatives on Christmas Day. I recall wearing it to ride my bike, that trusty mount of my imagination, up and down the narrow road (not the highway!) beside the house.

What I don’t recall is actually asking Santa for the outfit. My father claims ignorance of the origins also, guessing that it’s possible “one of your grandmothers thought you’d be ‘cute’ in them — maybe Grandma Simmons.”

He’s probably right about that.

Now, Dad was a big fan of the singing cowboys in his childhood. He told me in some Facebook messages recently that he considered himself Gene Autry most of the time, and he had his third grade school portrait taken in a Roy Rogers shirt.

And Grandma Simmons often saw her youngest son (my dad) when she looked at me; she even had a habit of naming off her two boys before getting to my name, and her awareness of the mistake made any time she called after me sound like an angry exclamation at the end of the dusty trail (“Ed-Jerry-Tony!”). What I’m getting at is, I can totally understand her wanting to dress my sister and me like Dad’s cowboy heroes.

Grandma also had little gas heaters in the corners of each room back then, and in our house there was a gas heater in the living room that we would back up to on cold mornings. Christmas recollections thus come complete with sense memories of cold feet and clothing that got too hot on the back side for comfort.  

(Because of the way the heaters tried to warm the old house, Dad recalls “ceilings so high you were warm when you stood up but cold when you sat down.”)

I look at photos now of my children on Christmas mornings when they were little, and I wonder what mysteries the pictures will hold for them in the future. I hope they’re as warm as mine.

Peace.

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(My column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for the week of Dec. 20.)

Friday the 13th Will Be Your Lucky Day

PANAMA CITY — Friday the 13th loomed in my thoughts this week for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I needed to have a column written for that day’s edition of PanamaCity.com.

I’m not superstitious, and the number 13 doesn’t frighten me — neither do deadlines — but both have given me cause to reflect this week (not that I need much motivation there; it’s sort of second nature by now).

So luck in all its forms was on my brain Monday when I took a turn down into St. Andrews. The morning fog had lifted, and the glowing gray-white sky had turned a gentle pastel blue. Men stood with fishing poles on the marina as the sun warmed the earth and the sea.

A haze remained over the bay, but fluffy cumulous clouds were building to the northeast, far beyond the tops of oak trees with their dangling moss beards and sleeves of resurrection ferns. I stopped in at Chez Amavida for a coffee and to see what Crystal had drawn on the brown paper roll behind the counter: Alice’s Mad Hatter was offering a Sumatra blend rather than tea.

All the best people are mad, or so Alice told the hatter. Good to know I’m in the best of company.

A beautiful day, I thought as I heard Bob Dylan singing, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright,” and my mind tried to connect that song, about a man leaving a woman, to the concept of luck. Don’t question it, I thought. Don’t think twice. It’s a beautiful day, and you’re only passing through; it needn’t be more meaningful than that.

There are times when the obstacles life throws at us recall, for me, a song from the old “Hee Haw” TV show I remember watching many a Saturday evening at my Grandma Simmons’ home: “If it weren’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all; gloom, despair and agony on me…”

The night before this, I carefully extracted the parts of an old foil Christmas tree from the original cardboard box; each metallic limb was inside a paper tube, and each fit into tiny angled holes along the wooden trunk of the tree. I constructed the thing atop my desk and hung ornaments on it that my children had made in preschool, along with a few Happy Meal toys they had picked up along the years.

I pointed a light with a rotating colored disc at the tree, and listened to the soft scraping of the disc’s edge against the inside of the light cover, wondering when it would finally refuse to turn. It’s an old thing, this tree and its light. It belonged to Grandma Simmons and passed to me after her death. I felt lucky to get it, and feel lucky now that the light still runs.

Other things happened over the weekend to which I could point and proclaim my gloom, despair and agony. My luck runs true, but it tends more toward a slow progression; rather than two steps back for every one forward, I just take one small stumbling half-step back these days. Still, that would be enough to make most people curse their luck.

And then there are the moments of clarity, when the sun is bright and the sky is clear, when strangers smile and good music plays on the radio. There are moments of purity, as colored lights swirl and twinkle on a tiny metal tree, or breezes make hanging moss sway under oak limbs.

We must take the bad luck, if such a thing exists, with the good. We just have to choose which one deserves more of our attention — because, one way or another, this is a lucky day.

Peace.

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(My column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.)

Under the moon and the Milky Way

Photo by Andrew Wardlow

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Walking under a full moon last weekend, I listened to oak limbs creaking, the hiss of leaves shuffling in a breeze, and tried to convince myself there was more happening in the dark.

That the trees were shifting to keep an eye on me as I walked. That something lurked unseen among the limbs or in the utter blackness under the gnarled branches.

It didn’t work.

I know the woods around my house, sparse as they are, host foxes, deer, rabbits and coyotes, snakes and squirrels and other beasties. I have seen a hawk glide over the trees, and a large horned owl perched atop a pine, and I have heard the call of a lonely whippoorwill in the night.

But I have not felt the chill of fright on those empty streets, walking under the vast open dome of the Milky Way, or seeing the landscape light up in shades of blue as clouds parted for the moon. I have not feared the unseen creatures in the wild, or even the ones in my over-active imagination.

I wasn’t always so assured in the night. As a child, I hated going into my back yard after sunset. My family lived on the southern boundary of a small town, with a few acres of woodland surrounding the house. I was convinced something supernatural and predatory walked behind the fence at night; I heard it moving when I went out to feed our dog, or on evenings Mom asked me to bring in laundry from the clothesline.

It followed me on nighttime walks with my older cousins near my grandparents’ home. Or so they would tell me, weaving ghost stories and legends as the moon trailed us in the sky and noises carried from the trees lining the road.

It lurked on the corner, just outside the cone of light from the street lamp. It hid in the bushes beside the bedroom window, waiting for me to look outside so it could reveal itself. It never did, except one evening when we were moving into our home (I was 7) and my uncle (13 years old) snuck up to the window to scare me silly.

Even as an adult, I have felt my hackles rise from some unseen but nonetheless sensed danger in the dark. Because I have also learned to trust my instincts, I make it a rule not to remain in places or situations that cause me to feel uneasy.

But that hasn’t been the case of late. Maybe there are enough real-world dangers that imagined ones don’t register any more. Maybe I have put aside the childish fears of youth, or exorcised them through my writing.

But more likely, I think, I have merely recognized that I’m where I need to be for this time, and that includes a bit of walking under the light of the moon, in the narrow lane between the deep shadows, where leaves rustle and something unseen goes bump in the night.

Peace.
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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald this week.) 

Connecting the Dots

PANAMA CITY — I try to notice when the universe starts speaking. Unfortunately, I seldom understand what it’s trying to say, but I’m learning to live with the mystery.

Regular readers of these columns may recall that I have admitted before how reason and faith are comfortable companions in my brain. This mystifies both my spiritual and atheist friends, which of course amuses me.

Look, I know we live in a random universe, but I continue to believe in signs, seeing meaning behind events that have no obvious connections — what others might call “coincidence.” Maybe it’s just magical thinking, but I can’t help opening myself to any deeper meaning when synchronicity smacks me upside the head.

It happened earlier this week, but all I know for sure in retrospect is that I was where I was supposed to be at that time. Abiding, one might say.

I came to the coffee shop to conduct an interview. The coffee of the day was “approved by The Dude,” according to a drawing of a bearded man wearing sunglasses that had been scrawled on brown paper behind the counter.

(You might recall The Dude in the film “The Big Lebowski” being accosted by the Nihilists, who tell him, “We believe in nothing.” I was thinking, right then, I believe I forgot my sunglasses today, and then recalled The Dude exclaiming, “Careful man, there’s a beverage here,” as I picked up my order.)

A few minutes later, I was talking to young singer/songwriter Kristen Barkuloo about songs that speak to us. She said she wanted her music to remind people of meaningful times in their lives. I mentioned that there are a few songs that do so for me, and one artist in particular.

Seconds later, David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World” began playing over the sound system and goosebumps rose on my arms. (Bowie released his latest music video, "Valentine's Day," on Tuesday, the day following this interview.)

Barkuloo talked about a song she was inspired to write after a young friend died in a car wreck, and I thought of my own history with similar tragedy. She talked of getting into theater productions and studying under Bruce Taws, and I further connected that to my son, a songwriter and singer who did theater with Bruce years ago, and whose best friend died in a car wreck.

So now we talked about linkages, connections.

She mentioned that she also wrote fiction, and I encouraged her to visit Writers Gallery, a monthly open mic for writers hosted at Chez Amavida that will reconvene in September after a summer hiatus. I told her it was organized a couple of years ago by local author Nick May, and then I looked to my left and saw Nick opening the café door.

Greetings all around followed, and more talk of strange connections. As The Stranger said, “I don’t know about you, but I take comfort in that.”

Peace.
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(This is my Undercurrents column for PanamaCity.com and The News Herald for this week.) 

Finding the Spark of Happiness in the Night

Photo by astrophotographer Jeff Berkes, April 14, 2013

PANAMA CITY BEACH — I was lying on my back in the middle of the street outside my house on Monday night and thinking about happiness as a state of being.

I had been searching the sky for fireballs, as it was supposed to be the day of the Lyrid meteor shower (but it seems the peak had been sometime before dawn on Monday, so I was late). The day had been cloudy, but as the night settled in, the clouds parted. A slight haze caught the lights of nearby businesses, however, obscuring most of the stars — and with them, any laggard meteors.

But I wasn’t disappointed, and here’s why:

I wasn’t alone out there in the dark. My wife and daughter also were reclining on the pavement, with couch pillows under their heads. We talked about our day and our upcoming vacation, and we joked about being discovered by a passing possum that might wonder what sort of roadkill we were.

(I will admit to a moment of panic when, after my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I glanced aside and saw bright lights on the street intersecting the one where we lay, and I thought a car was approaching; it was only the lights from our living room casting a golden glow on the street.)

As we stared into the heavens, waiting for a glorious revelation that never presented itself, I was glad to be aware of that moment, fully engaged and recognizing the sanctity of the experience.

It seemed all the more important, in that the day this occurred marked one week since the Boston Marathon bombings. So much negativity, sadness and anger had filled the week prior, that releasing all of those emotions for the simple act of being still and enjoying the stars seemed like the only revelation I actually required.

The next day, I sat in St. Andrews Coffee House eating my regular order and eavesdropping on an elderly gentleman’s loud conversation with his lady companion. The arrival of our sandwiches had precipitated a lull in conversation with my own luncheon companion, so the talk at the neighboring table invaded the silence.

The gentleman was talking politics, calling people “idiots” and shifting in his chair, while I was watching foot traffic on the sidewalks, the light clouds skimming through a blue sky, and enjoying the gentle breeze coming through the open door. I thought, he needs to hush and listen to the breeze. He might not live longer, but he’d be happier about it.

Later that same day, I received an email promoting the Amazon best seller “A Short Course in Happiness: Practical Steps to a Happier Life,” by certified psychology coach Lynda Wallace. According to her, research shows that the happiest people do four basic things that make the difference in their lives: They focus on what is good and positive in their lives, cope effectively with life’s inevitable challenges, develop strong relationships and pursue meaningful goals.

Now, I don’t know how effectively I cope with life’s challenges, but I have made a concerted effort to focus on the positive. I have goals I believe are meaningful, but most importantly I’ve been trying to develop meaningful relationships with creative, positive, compassionate thinkers and doers, both in my family and my circles of friends and acquaintances.

There are so many good people who share this region with us — artists, writers, philosophers, musicians, readers, actors, scientists, theologians, environmentalists, teachers, students and so many others. People doing good, striving to be better, and hoping for the best.

People who happily stare into the heavens and seek enlightenment, though our vision is clouded and our understanding limited — if only to wish upon a falling star.

Peace.

(This is my Undercurrents column for this week.)