Gone A Spell, Back Again

I beg no forgiveness for my recent absence. A much needed vacation in Walla Walla, with a serious theme of self-improvement and re-creation. Girls get grandparent time, I get time with Hannah, some book work done, and a nice four night stint at my childhood cabin. Head muddled, diet unsatisfactory, head cloudy but clearing. We arrive back past seven tonight, Hannah makes a marvelous feast for us. I put the girls to bed as Tomas from Rad Dad arrives with his daughter, her friend and Artnoose in tow.

Catch their Radical Parenting & Radical Letterpress presentation at Last Word Books Saturday night at 7pm!

Road notes from the tail end of February

Girls are little angels for the most part on our oddysey across Snoqualmie Pass in a rented minivan. Stop to buy chains since traction tires are required. Drive half an hour up the mountain. Pull over to chain-up. Chains are wrong size for tires (that bitch at Shucks with the cute smile; if you work at the bottom of a mountain pass you should know yer friggin' chain and tire sizes). Attempt to jerry-rig at the behest of dudelio who charges $25.00 a pop to help morons chain their rubbers on right. Drive 1/4 of a mile. Decide this could potentially be a terrible idea. Flip coin. Smoke cigarette quickly in massive blizzard before it gets wet. Turn around at exit, unchain (with massive complications). Wash filthy hands and sleeves in freezing stream. Girls wake up from twenty minute nap (note spike in loss of hair at this very moment). Drive back to North Bend. Exchange chains. Force smile. Get right size this time and proceed over Snoqualmie Pass once again. Get almost all the way to the top. Pull over to chain up. Guy in orange vest with truck approaches saying: "Don't know if I can push you out or not..." Rob responds: Oh, we're just putting our chains on." Man advises us to proceed without chains. We make it. One hour and $48.00 later we pass a semi-truck where something (propane tank) has blown up in rear of living quarters. One cowboy boot, pair of levis, one smoke stack, contents of fridge litter highway. Girls ask for more food. Their backs hurt, they say. Their feet hurt, they say. Their necks hurt, they say. I think they lie about 85% of the time.

Drop Rob in Moses Lake. Quick social play time, apple, coffee and smoke for Road-Papa with Rob's Ma and step-pa.

After jumping on enormous, comfy bed girls sleep all the way to Walla Walla. Wake up and play with G-ma & G-pa for a while before cuddling with Grandma to sleep. Papa reads and works on the computer until the wee hours, subliminally sorting huge loads of crazy information, emotions, stress, etceteras behind these curtains of night.

Why is it when we stop looking for something sometimes that something suddenly finds us? I refer, of course, to the human heart and head and the myriad number of emotions we seem able to process, compute, acknowledge, disregard, freak out about. Time steps up and slaps you in the face with all your past sins, a glove and hate relationship meant for dueling tongue in someone else's cheek until your fragile urn cracks and your contents spill all over the closest hearts. Bemused and befuddled by my own ambitions and desires and shit, how can I sort through the jewels and gemstones, offal and silt of other people's souls hoping to find my fix, my fill, my fantasies?

Part of me wants to turn inward only, the other part argues. My head butts itself. I banish these thoughts from my mind with a simple spell, for a simple spell, but they always return with friends in tow.

My girls get grandma time. Grandma gets girl time. I get some time to write and write back to my multitudinous friends whose words fill my self-imposed void(s). Schedules whirl around me and I loathe them but depend on them as well. Walla Walla tacos fill my belly. Burgess elucidates on the terrible state of world affairs in regard to human rights violations and gross actions on the parts of corporate lawyers. That's a phrase we should hear more of... "parts of corporate lawyers littered the streets today in the imagination of one young rebel father..."

When Rob and I came down Snoqualmie Pass there came a little bend in the road beneath an overpass where we both held our respective (or not so much, if you know us) breaths and made eye contact. Right then we both saw the wide Eastern open spread out before us, home, if you will, to a couple of tumbleweeds such as ourselves, who do not tumble nearly as much as we meant to.

I inhale this dry, fresh air and try to remember. Anamnesis kicks in, courtesy of the human sense of smell, and I revel in the vague memories of sense which a well-haunted place ellicits. I vow to myself to be better friends with the other single fathers in my vicinity. I vow to try to start over with my conceptions of giving love and being loved. I vow silently to work harder to better myself in the face of this challenging dawn. I vow my act to clean. I vow my hands to sully. I vow my dreams to fruition.

Tracks through December

Crazy long work play day at the bookshop with myself, Steph-o Lyli, Scarleht, Dave, Cora, Heather, Rowan and Dylan, many friends stop by the play throughout the day as I grow more and more exhausted but satisfied and perfectly at home amongst other crazy young parents. Power out all across western war-shington so Oly's downtown is flooded with people seeking hot coffee and breakfast. schools are closed, phones are down, the internet plays hooky half the day just to piss me off. I dash around helping customers and observing my girls interacting with this marvelous multitude of shining souls. They pay me little mind and I pretend to be too busy to notice, so we dance around each other in little increments over the course of this river of a day.

We have extended family dinner at Dave's after closing our cute little anarchist bookshop and sit around sipping wine and watching Lyli and Scarleht and Cora make a disaster zone of Dave's living room. Palenta lasagna and a quiet cigarette. Dave tried his damndest to read a book to Cora and Lyli and Scarleht and me but it's a little advanced for my ladies and they are utterly exhausted from the day's activities. I put them to sleep in Cora's bed as Dave cuddles his daughter in the big bed. This room we used to live in... now sleeping here again. Odd twinges of guilt and raw emotion as I lie here thinking and dozing for an hour as the girls nodd off. Then downstairs to learn pinochle for too many hours of fun with Dave and Doug and Hannah into the wee hours.

Leave my ladies at Last Word with Mama and gang of friends 'round noonish and hightail it down the demon gutter with Hannah, saying hello to the mountains, paying respects to the rivers, smoke and comfortable talk. A refunded ticket in Portland for arriving sans train, nice $25.33 in the proverbial pocket of the mastercard. Quick smoke and romance amidst the bustle of city life, then on board the Empire Builder to all points East. Most social train-ride I've ever taken. Chatty Chatty with the workers and passengers alike, unsure what exactly has put me in this mood but have a hunch or two. I link up with a professional bull rider from Kennewick named Jack and this awesome black dude whose name I can't recall who trains 12 to 20 year olds how to BMX and MotoCross. We talk and joke and drink across Washington, take a smoke break, lose the BMXer to relaxation rather than frantic bizarre conversation, enlist a 17 year old musician/songwriter and force him to play Texas Hold-Em with us for the last hour (actually, he was ready and willing). Talk it up with ladies across the isle. Meet a little boy named Noah and share Pirate Papa with his parents. Matt, the diner car attendant, and I hit it off big and joke the whole trip, thoroughly disturbing the other passengers I'm sure. I love the train. Sometimes I like to shack up and write and read and sleep, sometimes I like to party with total strangers for a matter of hours. I can't wait to take the girls on the train, I suppose I've just been apprehensive for whatever myriad reasons.

Meet up with Pops in Pasco and take the long dark way home, thru talk and fields and silence and smoke. Share some words with Aly, far away. A nice talk until 4 a.m. with Trevor in Hawaii revolving around Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. A movie and vegetation into downstairs futon. No words then, tho I pray a bit for them to come today, however mundane. Tomorrow the grindstone, beautiful bookwork and a few friends. It is cold here. But I am ready.

dreams, dances, denver. houses, homes, hopes. ferries, friends, fantasies.

Best vacation ever to Denver and a few points east of everywhere I'm used to. At
Red Rocks I learn that 'unconformity' is a geographic term as I gaze in awe at one
of the most amazing landscapes I've ever laid eyes upon. My friend Alyson spoils me
with a fabulous feast on Saturn's Day and shows me little bits (and beers) of the
city. For a smattering of days I am injected with a feverish fervor for the Denver
Broncos and am transported to have-to-be-a-football-fan-land. Aly's family seems to
like me, and I them, an interesting laid-back bunch of people. Plus it's always
fascinating to see where a good freind comes from. Too short a trip but there will
be others and it was a quiet, quite necessary break from my usual routines. However
cool my life may seem it's no less stressful than any other, and it doesn't serve
solid interests to compare one's miseries and happinesses to those of others
anyway. That just leads to a deep solemn grave of resentment and judgement.
Entranced by snow on the Rockies I try to put my future in perspective, aided by
the mere presence and rose-tinted lenses of a dear old friend's beauty and home and
roots and dreams. For once I abstain from the dark halls of bookshops to which I am
eternally addicted. Saving that experience for a trip to Denver with my business
partner Dave, having recently reconciled the shambles of our relationship.

All in all a soul-searching expedition that let me know my self and my own desires
more intimately than before.

My recently discovered cosmopolitan capabilities know no bounds beyond the
occasional economic restrictions that tend to bite us all in the ass every now and
then. Upon arriving back at Sea-Tac Rob picks me up and we dash to our friend
Ryan's new house he has purchased in Seattle off of Ranier. A fixer-upper he plans
to pave his future with, further injecting me with a wide variety of dreams and
aspirations I used to think were unattainable or far far away. But dreams are what
you make of them. Don't think for a second that just because you're young and poor
and a parent that you can't still travel or that you have to press pause on all
your fantasies for eighteen years. If it needs to happen then fucking find a way to
make it work. Quit yer stupid job and find a way to work from home, everything else
will fall into place.

A forty and some excellent tacos chased with top shelf tequila and a sobriety break
later we abscond to the ferry docks and take the 10:30 over to Bremerton, vastly
preferring the hour long ferry ride and easy drive down Highway 3 to the horrors of
Interstate Five, the demon gutter. Packing for another trip at 1:30 in the morning,
hurriedly packaging up the onslaught of orders from a weekend away from my central
-brain-hub-desk-literary-internet existence. At 2:30 a.m. we make the late-night
run to Oly and spend several hours talking and dancing to Zorba the Greek at Rob's
house. Then it's up early for a nice couple hours with Steph and the girls, the
longest time we've spent together in some time. It feels good, friendly again, as
if our harbored guilts and blames have evaporated given time and space. We don't
talk about much important, just hang out with the girls and then head downtown,
Steph off to work, me off to Portland in my shitty station wagon. A mostly
dependable car, just uncomfortable to drive. Windshield wipers on the fritz and
smearing the outside world that rushes by along I-5, I find myself driving in the
worst conditions imaginable. Pouring torrents of rain and waterfalls kicked
backwards by the thrumming thunder of eighteen wheelers. I hydroplane at 85 miles
an hour between two semi-trucks, sweating while the girls (thank god) sleep in the
backseat. Ten minutes later I find my station wagon perpendicular to the freeway,
still travelling in the right direction at sixty-five m.p.h. Behind me everyone
slams their brakes on as I cooly look to the right out the passenger window at two
dozen speeding cars rushing towards us. A quick counter-intuitive crank of the
wheel and we whip back around and speed off while I-5 South comes to a virtual
standstill behind me. Never done that single-handedly before! I count my blessings for all the driving experience I've got shoved under my belt and down my gullet. But christ, I've never been so scared in a car before.

Finally we leave the rains behind and make it to Portland for a quick beer and
words and smoke with Jess and Mike and Sparky Mark (proud new owner of a 1960s
speedboat my mind can only drool over) and friends. Then off in the dark (dammit)
to Walla Walla, arriving exhuasted around 9 pm. I recoup, sleep until 1 pm (thanks
Mom!) as mi madre takes care of the girls all day and I run around getting all my
errands 'round town done or at least kickstarted to allow for an easy-going
Thanksgiving with the folks. The soundtrack in my head plays songs from high-school
brought on by simply being in this place of my abandoned youth, songs from college
inspired by folks I think of missing, songs from Denver I couldn't manage to expell
even if the desire were to strike. Tomorrow promises more books, coffee with the
Burgesses and a drive back across the state to Portland and a small party for my
girls and their P-Town aunties and 'nuncles. Back up to Oly and a kid-free weekend
of working at the bookstore, unwind, regroup, try to plan out my schedule for the
next few months (something I've never been good at). I plan to sigh and relax and
spend next week (at least 3 days straight) wrapped in the comforts of a home grown
less lonely because of the sweetness of words and hearts and the reassuring
kindness of fresh dreams being realized and old wounds being licked finally.

My muse and music merge to become an image of a life that makes me cry with joy for
the possibilities it holds in store and I pretend these tears are merely warm rains
preluding a springtime of the soul. Sometimes it takes a healthy dose of happy to
realize you always carry some, just have to learn to find its depths and wrench it
up to see how light and bright your eyes are capable of shining.

I give thanks for my darling daughters and inimitable parents.
I give thanks for my beautiful shining friends who have helped and continue to aid me along this winding road.
I give thanks for my baby mama and wish her the best of wellness.
I give thanks for this world of continuous wonder in which we live.
I give thanks for your song inhabiting my warm den of dreams.
I give thanks for all the parents, young and old.
I give thanks for all the children who will carry us to the edge of life and beyond.

I give thanks.
I give thanks.
I give thanks.

The disappearing of self-doubt

Submitted by Libby of Being Mommy.

The disappearing of self doubt if only for a moment may have been the greatest gift given to me today. I will be forever thankful for that sweet breathe of relaxations. The girls and I went to the park with a friend of mine Sky and his twin daughters lily, and scarlet; Sky being the same age as me and the girls being the same age as Emily. So much of their father in these girls eyes makes me wonder is my girls will get the chance to have any of their father in their eyes. I think I may have been a little jealous of the daddy time his girls get to have. Now dont miss understand, when my husband is home his is fully attentive to those girls, but sometimes it feel like he will never be home again. And I have to wonder if this is how life will be for the next 17 years of our military adventure.

Seeing Sky made me remember just how important being a parent is. Hes been able to combine working from home and being a full time parent beautifully, and the wonderfulness of his daughters radiates from them because of it. The calmness that I felt in his presence for amazing, and I had to take of moment to let it all in and breathe. It was like for the first time in so long (perhaps since the last time I saw him) I was with another parent who didnt think we had to pretend that being a parent was a piece of cake. I didnt feel like I had to hide the every day stresses of being responsible for making a human being. I could sit there and talk about how much I love it but at the same time wanted to pull my hair out and his understood. In fact he reinforced that yes other parents feel that way too. Why is it that as parents we are not more of supportive of each other, that we put an unsaid competition between us of who is doing a better job? When in fact all we need from each other is a person to share war stories with. Where did the mentality of it takes a village to raise a child go?

This question will bug me for a while but lets go back to how nice it was to be with another parent for an afternoon. Emily and Makayla have perfected the art of playground playing. Makayla being the bossy overbearing one, and Emily being the quite do my own thing one. And though they were to busy in their own play to have much interest in me, my friend, and his daughters, they did from time to time run by to say hi and welcome the new girls into the park.

Lily and Scarlet however were a little more reserved. If was as if they were seeing a playground for the first time and it was amazing to watch their eyes. There may have been 20 to 30 kids there today the most theres been in awhile and the two girls were just not ready to enter the unknown on their own. So Sky not missing a beat let his daughter take the lead and slowly but surely they entered the toys. And the smile came shining though. Though daddy couldnt leave their eye sight, they did slowly find their way to move though everything on their own.

Daddy and girls moved beautifully though the pains of going off on their own. By the end of our adventure they were pros and you never would have known that first it was a little scary to them. And the best part is they did it themselves, no pushing, no forcing, just support, and a little hand holding and they were golden. And through slides and swing Sky and I found time to share, talk, and relate. And I found someone to breathe with.

This ground we play on

I cannot stand the weight of incessant questioning and worrisome stress. My mother breathes these out from her very being, to the constant annoyance of myself, my father and just about anyone else in the near vicinity (and she's gonna read this too, I better get my shovel). Patience wears thin, especially when the bulk of mine is dedicated to twin two year old whirlwinds. The result is a short temper and sharp tongue, neither of which she particularly deserves but also, neither of which have I much luck in suppressing. We all find our outlets into which to vent. I bite my tongue a thousand times and am vilified the one time I cannot bite it.

Okay, with that over and done with for the time being... we played in the park today with Makayla and Emily and their mama Libby, my old acquaintance turned life-long friend what with our dabbling in this commonground of kids. We met at the playground, foreign soil for Lyli and Scarleht indeed, especially with so many kids around. There were about twenty kids playing there today, with parents of all ages, Libby and myself being the apparent youngest. It was good to see her again, been a few months now and the last time I didn't have the girls. Makayla is almost five and Emily Joe is a week older than my girls. Both of them are substantially more social! Libby's husband Ben is in Korea right now with the Air Force and is in for the long haul, another seventeen years or thereabouts. Whew. Not what either of them were expecting and I sense a bit of regret in Libby's overall demeanor but she is one of the strongest women I have ever met so my worry refuses to enlarge itself.

Watching my girls slowly learn to open up and play with strangers is interesting... especially in a playground setting. I wonder if their parents would be put off if they knew who we were and the lifestyle we embody. But that's the beauty of it I guess, some basic common ground that precedes any other knowledge of an individual. It sort of cuts the bias off at the seed.

Eamon and Will call me from the farmhouse, having just unloaded the wagon full of books Eamon drove back this afternoon. Strange, having other grown men call me to tell me a job is done, a job I would normally do alone. The evolution of my own dreams beyond the scope of myself is becoming a common theme, what with Last Word Books and its ever-growing sphere of influence and lack of dependence on me these days. I thought my travels were almost over for a spell but it seems I will be returning to Walla Walla on Thursday for another load of stuff and books. 'Twill be good to have a night alone with my father though, good sparse words and better whiskey well into the night I imagine.

Unused to the quiet this past month. My mind devours itself whenever gifted the opportunity, flames licking up towards tomorrow's word-kindling. Looking forwrd to a relaxed day at my father's dilapidated cabin, maybe a quick fish, walk in the woods, pop off a few shots from the old pellet rifle at some indistinct target just beyond my field of vision (those are the most fun). I quiver thinking of home and yardwork. Wine and tacos before the drive on Monday. I'm stocking up, not drinking and driving, don't fret.

Sold a copy of Pirate Papa 'Zine over e-mail today to DaddyTypes! One of my first fifteen purchases still, it has yet to lose it's allure.

Walla Walla is fucking hot. Supposed to be 104 on Sunday, a scant matter of hours from now. I revel in my self and these moments of solitude in the darkness of my high school basement. Remnants of my childhood litter the floors and walls, as memories litter my befuddled brain. My heart aches a bit for those lost souls onto which I wanted to hang. Hallowed and hollow are the bones of my belief that inside each of us is a thing of beauty, a creature capable of changing itself a million times over, of donning and shedding a thousand masks, of doing evil and spreading good, of feeling love, hate, remorse, hope, compassion, sympathy, empathy, sorrow. The trick is in the blending of this smorgasbord a dish delectable in its unique qualities, rare but precise in its bloody rage and artistic in its temperaments. Outside thunder from a sporadic flash of heat lightning tamps out a muffled drum roll on the underside of the sky. would that I could live up to my own language. adieu.

back across the state in our rented cadillac tomorrow morning
to yakima and barns of books and printing equipment!
then on to olympia.

it has been fun here, though stressful. i am tired from working on so many books with so little time. grandparents are great when they're around and not stressing. the girls have been very receptive to them this trip. if one of them is in the room my job is done as they virtually ignore me and spend all their time with my parents. They are starting to call my Dad 'poppy' and my mom wants to be called 'gramma.' i'm glad they get to spend some time together, it makes my parents very happy for a short period of time before they slip back into their haze of routine.

a brief respite tomorrow night and then x-mas eve at Last Word with Rob. steph resigned her americorps job today so we're gonna figure a few new things out over the next month. adios.

me play all day and me work all night

scarleht swept the kitchen floor with my mother this evening. lyli wore a dastardly pink collared button-up tee. i drank some moosedrool and pored over old books when i wasn't reading goodnight moon for the twenty-thousandth time.

time here at "home" is strange. my folks work most of the time and my mother is obsessive compulsive enough to waste what little time she has cleaning instead of hanging out with her grandchildren. my father is tired and detached. one of my dogs is dead and my old grey cat is on her last leg. it is as if the sand inside the hour glass has eaten away at the mummified memories I left here entombed in a self i thought i past.

a tiny cry from the basement rouses me from reminiscing. that room down there filled with the trinkets i infused with meaning once, now less. i thought that maybe i could escape the cliche, you can never go home, but it seems that even i must fall victim to time's ambiguities. i, who used to scoff at schedules, am now wrapped tight amidst them.

like a pair of pancakes i flip my girls and they fall back to sleep. two wrinkles ironed out in the clothing of this night.

I have been spreading the Pirate Papa word amongst the brave peoples of Olympia these past two weeks. Overall response has been excellent. Several staunch republicans shook my hand today before we debated our differing viewpoints of war. Many fathers have thanked me and promised to write something but I have yet to receive any submissions. I am very glad to see a few comments popping up here and there, even if I do know the commentators. I really believe strongly in this project and wish I had more energy to devote to it. But that's why I need submissions! So please, get the word out to any fathers you may know, old, young, the whole gambit. I want to make this site a solid resource for any troubled fathers seeking answers to their questions or support for their conflicting tangled emotions.

Tomorrow I will drive across Washington state to Walla Walla with my girls in a fat lincoln continental courtesy of an inside hookup at Enterprise. Definitely not my style. I may dress up for the occasion. We will spend three days there working on books and playing at my mother's house and father's bookstore. I love going there with them at this age because we just walk around and I tell them stories about the place and show them the things I remember from my youth and adolescence. I know that not all of it is sinking in but the practice for later feels good. Driving long distances with Lyli and Scarleht hasn't presented much of a problem yet, they seem to settle into the rhythms of the road and relax and look out the windows. As long as I am attentive to their basic needs, diaper, food, water, etc., everything's peachy. Hope White Pass is passable.