Category: essays

I just want Taylor to be happy.

I guess I realized it on Super Bowl Sunday. The lead-up to the game included all kinds of packaged pieces about the players’ lives and families – you know, stuff chicks like.

There was a big story about fathers and daughters. Not to be confused with the now-accepted but stupid term “#girldad” (as if the term “dad” is inadequate), this was a story about how Sundays were previously reserved for fathers to numb themselves to the world around them and be ignored by their daughters for 3-12 hours.

But lo and behold, now they are times that fathers can enjoy watching grown men maim and concuss each other alongside all their children, even the girls!

Taylor had brought families together.

We are a Sunday football family. I don’t think my daughters are that into it – I’m just a dad and not a #girldad so I don’t pay much attention to them – but my wife and I watch it from pre-game till bedtime. Red Zone especially. I am a lifelong Cowboys fan (in varying stages of grief) but she just loves all of it. We watch Hard Knocks. We watch(ed) Sam Ponder on ESPN prior to her firing and replacement by another host with a beard that came straight out of a focus group.

We are not posers. We are legit fans of the sport. It’s brutal and probably a bad way to spend hours of our existence, but we love it.

We are not fans of the Kansas City Chiefs, per se – but we’re not haters either. We like to watch all the teams. And, since Red Zone cuts to touchdowns, we watch a lot of the Chiefs. Moreso, since they get the prime time games, we watch a lot of them then too.

So when it started happening – the cuts to the box – there was a murmur.

There is a Swiftie in my house.

And not a poser. A legit fan.

A fan to the point of it being dicey when someone outside the house makes a snide comment. If we are in public, or, say, at a family gathering, we dare not laugh at a Taylor joke, we just pretend not to hear it and hope we make it home without seeing bloodshed.

There was an anti-Taylor comment made in our presence in 2020 that still gets quoted derisively in the house. 

Swifties don’t forget.

It’s charming when Tony Romo and Jim Nantz refer to the camera catching Tay in the luxury box, awkwardly sharing oxygen with Brit. That murmur I mentioned – yeah, it was me. I have yelled across the house before “there she is!” so I’m not pretending to be above the fray here. It’s nice to feel justified in my football-watching, and having a common interest makes me feel less guilty when I refuse to help with homework because the Vikes and Seahawks are tied in the 3rd quarter of a pivotal October matchup.

So to be clear from the outset – I like it all. I like Tay-Tay, I like football, I like good football, I like the Chiefs, I like the camera-cuts, I like Tony Romo, I like the Cowboys.

But.

I fear.

---

He sat in a dank prison cell, days from his home, never to see his family again.

And his concern was how to tell the others what was really going on.

He could not say it plainly. The political environment was so toxic that he risked his life – what was left of it – by speaking the truth.

His options were to be silent or to find a way to say it secretly.

His education came back to him. The texts he had studied, recited, written and taught, that were so often misunderstood by people, were in fact the key for him to relay his message.

This governmental abuse was not new. He recognized it, the pattern, the techniques, the inevitable outcomes. But more than that, he recognized the desire that was as old as time – the desire for power. Not power over weaker people, but power to get back at the strong, the bad people who had done damage. If the good people could just get the power back, they could make things right. But they had to find a way to get the power – whatever it took.

John knew the temptation for his friends to seek power was so strong that he was willing to risk his life to open their eyes. Ironic then that the only way to reveal this truth was to hide it in codes and symbols. John had to give his community an apocalypsis – a revelation.

---

Tom Cruise went to the Olympics. Did you see him? At the men’s basketball Gold Medal game, they cut to him several times. Top Gun came out in 1986. His 7th (not a joke) Mission Impossible movie came out in 2023.

The biggest American movie star of the past 40 years was on hand as the most famous American professional athletes competed for the most important sporting award in the world.

Am I alone in thinking it felt small compared to any Taylor sighting at Arrowhead? That time they-did they?-wheel her in hidden in a cargo cabinet to avoid the crowds? 

Not to mention that time she and Travis met on the field after he won the Super Bowl? All-time, right? Maverick’s got nothing on that.

Taylor is as big as it gets.

I tread carefully here, but I am going to say that I understand a little more of her popularity now that I have seen the concert film. Okay, I only made it through a couple eras, but I tried.

The themes are universal, the music is good. There is a massive volume of it. But her effort is attractive. There are some awkward moments in her performance, but she it so committed that it becomes endearing. She is not other-worldly, she maintains her commonality to an exponential degree. The awkwardness tells us she is not conning us. If she was perfect, we wouldn’t trust her, because we know that no one’s perfect.

---

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.

The first generation held out hope.

They had been the ones to see him, to hear him. Even if they hadn’t, they had friends who did. Who heard him teach. Maybe they even knew someone who saw a healing.

But the first generation were dying.

The second generation had grown up hearing about it. And while they believed, they believed differently. They had a hard time understanding what the waiting meant. What were they supposed to believe living in a world that was bound to be changed, but so far had been the same, year after year? The worst times were past – the times of government-sponsored murder – but it was still not the world the first generation promised them.

So, with the second generation’s stories in mind, of the terrible time, the third generation found a way to prevent it from happening again – they could take power now because the government could be changed, finally. All they had to do was make a few agreements, a few trade-offs. Their grandparents would never have approved, but they were gone now. They were a new generation, one that had to prove they were able to make things right.

So they agreed to the compromises – give a little to get a little. Maybe the words aren’t the same, but they could get what they wanted – get the laws changed in their favor, get the funding for facilities, get out of the shadows. They might have to share the new buildings with their new partners. They might have to send some of their money to some different people, some people who had helped them get this new power. They might have to go along with laws they didn’t like, but which, when you think about it, didn’t relate to them anyway. They could finally get their friends out of exile. It was worth the compromise.

---

Do you listen to SiriusXM? I love it. I have 5-6 favorite channels. Among them is channel 26, “Life”with John Mayer.

But I have to hide that preset. Not hide, really, but I don’t leave it on there. John Mayer got a song written about him by Taylor. They dated, but it doesn’t seem to have ended well.

So John’s on a list.

It’s a fun list. Everyone on the list is doing fine. They all have a different career path, and whatever they did to earn a song from Taylor didn’t seem to end them.

Some of them are still friends with her, which is very nice.

But most of them, they belong to a different list as well.

They are blacklisted by Swifties. The word cancelled may or may not get tossed around. As far as my experience tells me, John Mayer is on the cancelled list.

That new MMA movie looks interesting, maybe not great, but I’d be curious about it if it didn’t star Jake Gyllenhaal, who’s on the list. I fear even searching for it on Apple TV, it might remain in my search history. And Taylor’s history of search has left a trail of men that are better off not mentioned in the house.

---

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down…to the earth, and his angels with him.

They were called Ladies’ Teas. They were ostensibly a gathering of women of churches across America to interact with a live video feed of Laura Bush, first lady at the time, discussing issues relevant to women of faith.

As one not a woman of faith, I don’t know what was discussed, or how the event went off. I just remember hearing about them before they happened and then hearing about what happened afterward.

The organizers of the event, upon its completion, asked women to send in (mail I suppose?) copies of their church directories, which listed, in most cases, the names, addresses, and phone numbers of fellow church members. I have to assume this was presented as a means of accomplishing the goals and desires discussed during the “Tea”. Why not just let the folks at the national level reach out to as many people as possible to make sure the word of this good work was getting out?

Someone caught on fairly quickly and protested that it was not appropriate to ask people to send this private tax-exempt church’s information to a government entity.

Good catch. Not sure how they didn’t see it coming, though.

Because those who seek power can rarely be trusted with power.

---

The Chads and Brads took to social media to complain about the Taylor takeover of football broadcasts. Taylor smote them in clear and convincing fashion.

But the Chads and Brads were right.

If the most sacred institution you have begins to rely on an outside source for attention and authority, you are screwed. You have ceded power to something you no longer truly know or understand. You should fear this. You should protest this.

If…

If that is the most sacred institution you have.

We watch a lot of football. We love watching and love spending the time together. But never on Goodell’s green earth would we use the word sacred. Or even important. It’s entertainment. That’s it.

Music is different. It’s personal, which is why churches split over it. I love music. I cherish music. There are moments in my life that are more sacred because of the music that was sung at the same time. It is this way for us all. Weddings, funerals, family members playing songs for dying parents, spouses, children. These are sacred. Not because of the singers, but because they are a doorway via the creativity that is distinctively human into the realm of the divine.

That is a power that is transcendent. So of course football will lose to it. They can both be entertaining, and it’s okay. It’s okay to like them, love them to some degree. Taylor Swift is not music, she is a musician. She is less than transcendent, but her music is transcendent for many.

This should be terrifying to someone who believes a sport is the highest point of existence. While that’s not me, I still want her to be happy with Travis. I want to see them smiling on my television once a week in the Autumn. I want them to be a pleasant element for an entertaining day.

My fear, of course, is that if she dumps Travis, I would have to hide football like I hide my John Mayer CDs.

But I’m not at risk of losing my soul.

---

The cliche is that politics make strange bedfellows. I have seen tea-totaling pastors and liquor stores protest the same ballot measure. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. This is power thinking.

People who support separation of Church and State have a common enemy — the lies that one side tells the other.

The church that wants political power will be manipulated by politicians who dangle the power as bait. The politician will lie about how much power he will be sharing. The church will lie to itself about how much it’s willing to tolerate.

The politician who wants church support will be bound to a narrow set of values despite her job to govern a broad population. The church will lie to maintain its power over the politician. The politician will lie to herself about her decisions to govern well for her entire community.

---

The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.1

---

Power is a drug – the more it’s desired, the more dangerous it is.

Beware the one who seeks power by all means. Power that is given is one thing, but power that is coerced, pulled, demanded, romanced, and sweet-talked always turns into something else. That’s what John the Revelator knew. Give the emperor what the emperor deserves, don’t give up the sacred, your being, your baby, in order to win what the emperor seeks. When you think of power as a commodity, you will be proven correct. And you will never be the one who gets more of it.

---

1 This and all previous block quotes from The Revelation of John, chapter 12, New International Version

It was a revelation, in the same way getting a physical after 40 is a revelation.

I texted Lex as soon as it sunk in.

Out-of-context text messages with sweeping existential generalizations are probably not the best way to touch base with old friends, but I had to know if I was on an island, and if so, how big the island was.

“Are we all just making it up?”

I had a falling out with someone I considered a friend, but realized was not.

This followed—immediately followed—a conversation with someone I considered a friend, but realized later that we didn’t really even know one another.

What did those encounters have in common, I asked myself for a few days. I replayed each conversation over and over, exaggerating the awkward parts more each time. One had been an outburst, my outburst, followed by the other’s continued dismissive and increasingly hostile public response. The other, a private conversation that had begun in a place of safety and excitement but had been carried forward by an undercurrent of power and religious guilt.

The common thread, the only one I could pin down, was the way I felt after each one. Head spinning, knocked onto my heels. A strange, new sensation, a mix of anger, shock, and awareness.

I think I reached self-actualization.

(Make that anger, shock, awareness, and pretense.)

I am drawn to marketing because I think a lot, and one of the main things I think about is what other people think. A few years ago I came to the realization that this was, along with predicting the future, my superpower. I texted Lex about that, too.

I am not good in groups. I am not good in public. I used to be. But now, I get exhausted from the work of trying to decipher people’s intentions. One shortcut I have found is to assume the worst. Of course this is a protective mechanism. It is one that I’ve had to build. It keeps me from trusting people or situations that are not trustworthy, because I kept finding myself in untrustworthy scenarios. Mostly, it was due to my eagerness to please, defuse, or escape conversations instead of engage and express. When I get nervous, I start agreeing to whatever someone says, just hoping to get out of the conversation and back to my pickup or recliner. Right? Right?

So, if I assume people are self-absorbed or disrespectful, I don’t have to be let down. If I am wrong, I am happily wrong. As long as I don’t tip my hand, I can be cynical and distant, and only when I find someone who speaks the same language or has the same humor or is frustrated by the same situations will I let enough of my guard down to, possibly, connect.

The result of this constant wall-building is that I have a stockpile of trust to be placed in a scarcity of people.

I don’t know if trust is earned or given. Seems like people have an opinion on that. While I don’t, I do know that within us is an innate desire to trust people. This desire can be misplaced and lead to pain, heartbreak, and even devastation. But the healing of that devastation will involve rebuilding that ability to trust—alongside a development of discernment as to who is actually trustworthy.

So, trust is good. I say that as an untrusting person.

But if I withhold it, it wells up and needs some place to be directed. My tendency is to place it—in large quantities—into certain people.

In both of the interactions I mentioned earlier, I had placed too much trust in someone.

I was not devastated—or even hurt—by these people. That’s what was so strange about the feeling I had at these pivotal points. Pain is obvious, but awareness is shocking.

Have you ever sat at a red light only to find out the green light isn’t working? So the red light goes off and nothing happens?

Worse, have you ever driven through a green light when the driver checking their phone in the intersecting lane wasn’t paying attention to their red light?

When the thing you trust fails, it’s difficult, but understandable.

When the person you trust fails, it’s difficult, and painful. But eventually, you at least understand the cause of the failure, and have somewhere to put the blame.

But when you realize it’s not the other person who has failed, but you, that’s the wind-knocked-out feeling I had. I gave more trust than was earned—like pouring a gallon of water into an 8 ounce cup, it was unreasonable. Illogical. It was unfair.

It was not fair to expect anyone to know more—so much more—than I know. After all, I know the future.

My logic has always been, whether I admitted it or not, that if I trust someone, that must mean they know the future plus more.

It turns out that it’s not their knowledge I trusted, it was their confidence. And by confidence, I mean arrogance.

There are people—the people who are loud and successful enough to mistake their success for ability—whose confidence outruns their knowledge by so much that they lose sight of reality.

These people are easy to follow.

If you were lost in the proverbial desert, with a group of other people, who would you choose to follow? The person who, lying, says, “Follow me, I know where to go!” Or the person who, honestly, says, “I can’t be sure, but we have to try this direction if we’re going to have a chance.”

The fact that you don’t know who is lying or honest means you must choose the one who tells you they can help. It would be foolish to do otherwise.

But eventually, you’ll realize they were lying. Probably, they were even lying to themselves. But survivorship bias means that the ones who are around and say they know sure look like they know. So that’s who we follow.

I don’t blame many of these people for believing themselves. They are often trapped. They have to keep up appearances, or maintain credibility, or fake it until they really do make it.

And while you’re probably imagining someone sinister right now, I’ve pretty much described what it is to be a parent. So take it easy on us!

No, the pain is not being lied to. The pain is realizing you let yourself be lied to. Worse, that you went looking for it.

My devastating realization was that I can’t know what people are thinking—mind-reading is not possible. I can guess, and even tell myself I am right. But I can’t actually do it.

The accompanying realization was that I can’t predict the future—neither can they—no one can. If I make a guess and I’m right, okay. But that’s just what humans do—anticipate. Hopefully better and better with age, but it’s never actually knowing the future.

It turns out that what I always considered my superpowers were just cognitive distortions.

“If your every sentence admits a doubt, your writing will lack authority.” Strunk & White p. 20

“If your pastor tells you every Sunday what an awful sinner he is, then pretty soon you’ll start to wonder if he should be your pastor!” James Heflin

This is such a strange dance we are doing, dear reader. I am at that point in life where I know some things well, and I assume everyone knows them as well. But there’s so much in this big terrifying broken stupid beautiful world that I don’t know. You don’t want me to list those things, or tell you how much I don’t know. You’re here, after all, to receive something.

And ignorance is, of course, nothing.

So here are my options:

Make something up. At least then it’s a something. And if I really try, I can give you the context, experience, stories, and body language that will let us both agree that I know what I’m talking about—which is more than you. This is probably more easily described as “Marketing.”

Stick to what I know.

Option 1 is a rope bridge above a death-deep canyon. And although I can tell you to ignore the “noise” that is actually fraying rope, there will come a point where you will drop, just like I did, and find yourself falling.

Hopefully, you’ll have a friend like Lex willing to text you back with helpful words.

Or, if we choose Option 2, you’re going to have to bear with me when I tell you authoritatively about something you know more about than I. This is just how it has to work.

The problem—and the solution—is that I’m not content with what I know. So, I’ll learn until this pasture-dented brain can’t learn anymore. And when I know something—really know it—I’ll let you know, too.

What I can’t do is fake it. What I have to do is tell it.

Maybe it will make a connection for you, to see the thing in a different, new, better way. Maybe it’s not relevant right now, but someday, it will click into place, a rusted old tumbler in a lock you didn’t know needed opening.

I’m willing to swing and miss.

You’re just going to have to trust that I’m not making it all up.

Hey, remember film photography?

It used to be called “photography.”

In fact, if you call it “film photography,” it’s likely that you are a photographer who talks about it enough that you have to distinguish. Digital photography is now just called “photography.”

Now that film photography has turned into a time machine, few people younger than 40 understand the commitment of a roll of film.

While these sound like the opening statements of an old man left at a forgotten station while the train of time rolls on, I think it’s all pretty great.

Sure, there are drawbacks to the flooding of servers in unknown locations, aka “the cloud,” but the fact that every little kid grows up taking pictures as often and easily as we used to throw rocks is pretty cool.

In fact, some of those kids get bored with the thousands of pictures they take by the time they are teenagers and actually get interested in the time machine of “film photography.” They are buying film cameras from the 90s—that we would have called cutting edge—because they’re cheap and available. They’re okay spending $5 for a roll of film, and $20 to mail it and get it developed, because they have discovered the exact type of film that produces a look they like, a look that I would call nostalgic, but they call vintage. Or old.

While these few get it, most others their age don’t know that when you shoot film, you have to commit to several things:

1. 24 or 36 exposures
2. Waiting weeks to get the pictures back
3. Color or Black and White

I like that these commitments exist in a new way now. The time factor wasn’t around when drug stores and Wal-Marts developed overnight. But now that everything has to be sent off to a specialty lab, it’s an added level of commitment.

But my favorite commitment is color vs black & white. Very few film photographs on Instagram are black & white, because the color films are different enough from modern iPhone pics that they are interesting.

In the old days, we considered black & white to be vintage. Or old. But now, black & white has lost its appeal, at least on social media. A notable exception here is the work of Alan Schaffer, who has become a bit of a photography rock star for his black & white images. The “old” pictures that are still around in picture frames or photo albums are not black & white, they’re Kodak. Black & whites belong in museums.

What is interesting is that even in this context, there are digital cameras being produced and sold that only shoot black & white.

Sounds odd at first blush, right? What kind of weirdo limits themselves to black & white when any digital camera can do both?

This’n.

I got one because I have never understood black & white photography. I mean, obviously I understood the difference. I just didn’t understand why some pictures are good in black & white and some are good in color.

My first thoughts, after picking photography back up in 2019, were that if the colors weren’t pretty, then edit it into black & white. If the sun is too bright, too high in the sky, it washes out the color of the image. So just switch those to black & white in the editor and see if they work. It was my format of last resort. More often than not, the image just didn’t “work” in either color or BnW, so it got tossed.

Sometimes the only way to learn something is to learn it.

I started shooting a few images with the “monochrome” mode of my primary camera. It made some interesting shots.

But even when the shots were interesting, they were just edits, versions of the original. I always felt like black & white was a lesser version of the original. Derivative. But I heard and saw photographers I respected talk about it in a way that implied they saw something I did not.

I tend to get obsessive about new ideas, and this one started to really dig in. What, really, is black & white? What am I missing?

So, I bit the bullet. I got one of the “monochrome” versions of a favorite brand of mine. And then I just shot it for a while.

I remembered a line I’d heard in the past: color photography captures the image, black & white captures the soul.

But what if you’re still in the pre-portrait phase of photography, like I am? Eager to avoid the emotions and judgments of people when they see their own face? I usually only shoot people—and dogs—as they are passing by, not posing, except of course for black & white dogs who live in my house. But usually, I stick to things and places.

So, what could be unique about landscape photography in black & white?

Do the strata of Palo Duro Canyon have a soul?

They certainly exist more prominently in black and white. In color, the bleached layers get lost in the rust. But in monochrome, they have their own life.

And it’s not because they are the white and everything else is the black. The more pictures I took, the more I realized that in the black & white pictures I liked the most, there is neither true black nor true white. The shades between are what make the image.

The soul exists in the continuum of the gray.

It was at this time that, in my non-photography life, I reached a point of frustration, based on a single idea—that my time was being spent in ways that benefitted others more than myself. And I was ready for that to change.

I tend to get obsessive about new ideas.

In this case it involved the decision to make wholesale changes, put an end to the things that put me where I was. Stop it all, in fact. Change in every way imaginable. If I was unhappy with one thing, I should change everything.

In psychological parlance this is called—wait for it—black and white thinking.

This is the trap we fall into when we see one failure as an indictment on all areas of our lives. One work mistake makes all work terrible. One personal shortcoming makes me worthless. One unkind word makes that person terrible.

It is easier to think this way. It requires less effort to see beyond the obvious or the one-time event and really maintain curiosity and openness. If we can just assign value to everything and everyone once, it makes life a lot more simple.

But of course, this is a terrifying measure for others to use on us. All-or-nothing thinking is not how the world works, and it robs us of deeper, more meaningful opportunities for experience, growth, and relationships. The conflict between you two might be terrible. But the resolution of it might be wonderful to a level you did not know existed.

The harm done is unthinkable. But the strength built from working through the harm is life-changing for you and life-giving for others.

The black and the white are there, but they are traps. If you stay there, you miss so much. The soul of it all exists in the continuum.

Each day, among the many courage-summoning mantras I utter to myself, I’ve added this one: Where will I find the gray today?

Instead of limiting people and circumstances to good or bad, helpful or harmful, right or wrong, how can I be open to the many possible connections that open up all around me? What experiences, lessons, creative thoughts could I receive by looking instead of labeling? What can I see today?

There is infinite potential between the black and the white.

I’m going to guess I first heard the song when was 12 or 13. I fell in love with its hook. I don’t know where I heard it first, though. And I’m pretty sure I didn’t hear the whole song—just the first few lines of the chorus. But it burrowed deep into my soul—that tone, that melody was captivating.

What song?

See, that’s the problem. In 1992, as a young boy whose tractor radio only picked up country or lite-rock stations, I never knew what the song was. I didn’t know the title or the singer. Or if it was a band, for that matter. It was a man’s voice, and kind of had that singer/songwriter vibe—although I wouldn’t have known to use the term “singer/songwriter”—or “vibe,” for that matter.

So, what did we do in the Dark Ages when we had a question like this?

Who sings the song that goes “…..”?

Years. I’m not exaggerating. I went years not knowing the song was titled—

“For What It’s Worth” and the band was Buffalo Springfield.

Plus, it’s a weird title to the song we all know by its opening line, “There’s something happening here.”

If memory serves, it was 1997 when I finally found out the name and title—by happening across a compilation cassette tape of oldies music, maybe named “Summer of” something? I don’t remember. But I do remember that when the JVC tape deck in my car started playing it, my eyes lit up. I had finally discovered it! I grabbed the cassette case and read the 5-point typeface on the back flap, and my quest was finally achieved.

I always attributed this void in my musical past to the fact that we were in the Dark Ages, before the advent of the internet. We had knowledge, sure, but the way we shared it—the way we acquired it—took effort. And sometimes, even with effort, we just had to give up on knowing some things.

How could I have figured out what this song was? I don’t remember asking my parents. I was either a teen or a pre-teen, so obviously my parents were useless.

No one my age knew what I was talking about when I tried humming the tune or the lyrics I could recall. Possibly because I was terribly off-pitch. But also, they might never have heard the song—remember, country and dentist’s office pop was all we had on the radio. I would say that many people in Quitaque, Texas knew the song, but the ones who did were not the ones around me when I thought about wanting to know its identity.

This was not a knowledge problem, but a blinders problem. I didn’t go looking for an answer because I immediately forgot I had the question once the song was over—wherever I heard it or snippets of it.

I consider myself a curious person. In fact, it is the thing that has become my best skill in the past few years. I doubt it is a new talent. I bet I was at least an above-average-curious kid. So I don’t think it’s a result of intellectual laziness that I had a lot of unanswered questions at that age.

I think the world I lived in was just smaller.

We have a child gate at our house. Our children are too old for a child gate, but we use it for the dogs. The gate is probably 18-24 inches tall. We prop it against a doorway to keep the dogs in our out of a room depending on guests or messes or whatever. It works. Always has. Our dogs are about 50 pounds each, and back in my ranching days, they could jump from flat-pawed into the bed of my pickup, which is quite tall.

They couldn’t jump the gate as puppies, so they remain convinced that is still the case.

Of course this applies to humans as well. When we don’t know what we don’t know, it takes either great curiosity or great revelations to shakes us from that state.

Alta Vista was the thing that did it for me.

The Internet began with the great Search Engine Race. Lycos, Infoseek, AskJeeves—if you’re naming more in your head, you were there. These and many more all paled in comparison to the best search engine of them all. That’s right, AltaVista. The dominant treasury of information was contained in the magic files of altavista.com—the biggest search engine of 1997. At least that was the conclusion drawn in the binder at Caprock Public Library.

Volunteering had just begun to look good on college transcripts in the 90s, so I was trying my hand at climate-controlled work for free as a way to avoid the tractor and the cage of country music and LiteRock 97.

I would go for an hour each week and use AltaVista to look up questions that people in Quitaque had—or something like that. I don’t remember scanning for much—because people didn’t come to the library for answers to questions no one else in town could answer, they came to the library for books. Research was its own separate world. It was not by reading that you found answers, it was by scouring giant encyclopedias, WorldBooks, Atlases and who knows what else—literally—who knows? Microfiche?

The world was not yet full of information then—it was devoid of it. Little did we know—no, not even little—in no way did we know that we, all of us, were in an information desert. But even if we had known that, we’d have missed the fact that the desert was actually a beach upon which the tsunami of information was barreling toward us, about to drown us all with anxiety parading as “research.”

I love learning, but there are times I miss the desert.

I can know the inner thoughts of celebrities, politicians, pastors and anyone on earth, instantly.

Or, I can learn a new skill in a matter of minutes with just a casual search.

I can be coerced and manipulated into anger and action, all before my mind actually has time to be angry.

Or, I can connect with people thousands of miles a way to support, encourage and learn from each other.

I can diagnose, suffer, listen and tell, again and again and again, daily, hourly, minute by minute.

I can find an answer to any question—right, wrong or irrelevant—at any moment.

I have access to more than my brain can ever think to ask for.

The knowledge is overwhelming and powerful—it is good, it is bad, it is…

What it is ain’t exactly clear.

And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

—Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”

My favorite clothing item as a teenager—maybe ever—was my 1994 Make-A-Wish Car Show souvenir t-shirt. It looked perfect under a flannel button-up worn, of course, with faded Levi’s and Doc Martens.

But it was fine on its own, too. White, the front bearing the ubiquitous multi-logo-and-wordy-moniker of a sponsored event. Car shows, fundraisers, 5ks, all these shirts are hideous, but only less so because they signify your presence. Here I was, world. I was at a thing, I participated. For a brief moment in time, before the ashes of my remains were scattered across the lone and level sands of the universe, I tread this road. I lived and did a thing or two. And here is proof. All who behold my prosopon will know that at a specific point in time, in a specific place, with others—I was.

This is why concert T-shirts—legit ones that were bought at the concert, not online—are treasured. A group of inhibited individuals and I all enjoyed the same sound waves in a hot building one night xx years ago. You did not. I did.

Look on my torso, ye Mighty, and despair!

What was the event? What did the 1994 Make-A-Wish Car Show in Amarillo, Texas, USA mean to me?

Couldn’t tell you.

But I think it was the first one I knew I was at.

Among my favorite songs is Bright Eyes’ “First Day of My Life.” These lines get me every single time.

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway.

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you.

Awareness is the thing that becomes true regardless of the experience itself.

I met Lindsey in 1998. I did not come to my senses until late 1999. But when I did, it all became the truth. The experience of that year-and-a-half before dating her is all a preamble now. As I look back half a lifetime ago, I can say now that hers was the first face that I saw.

And now, fair reader, your writer will attempt to make the segue from the love of his life/mother of his children to a car show.

I went to lots of car shows before 1994. But that was the one I became a car guy.

I’m not going to feign my mechanical proficiency, I’m just handy enough to dis-assemble an engine, not put it back together.

But the 60’s, man. Those cars, in the 90s, were everything to me.

I would be cutting donuts in the school parking lot 6 months later in a 1965 Ford Mustang GT, at my absolute peak of self-confidence and self-worth. And self-delusion, sure, but that’s what cars are about after all.

Last Friday night, I helped my dad drive two of his classic cars into one of the showrooms of the Amarillo Civic Center. The 2024 Make-A-Wish Car Show would open its doors for the 39th time the next morning. And in it would be a 1957 Ranchero and a remake of a Shelby Cobra from the blessed 60’s.

The Cobra, a muscular open-top torpedo, had given trouble starting and running smoothly on the drive to the venue. Not enough trouble to prevent some acceleration, according to his co-pilot, my daughter Lily. After parking it in its designated location, we popped the hood to troubleshoot. The little battery would need to come out, either it or the alternator were the culprit.

“It showed to be charging back up to 10 or 12 volts,” dad said.

“Nope. Needs to be 13 to 14.5,” volunteered a neighboring exhibitor who had wandered over, un-beckoned, at the sign of trouble. He had a Ranchero and a girlfriend, but no fine conversational skills. After a few more details about what it takes to be an adequate alternator, dad and I tired of the free advice. We set to removing the battery while Lily polished off the Cobra with a towel. Feeling bad for the cold shoulder, I struck up a conversation with the nosy neighbor and he wound up being a pleasant enough guy, we had some common engine interests too.

Car Show guys are men. And, let’s be honest, old men.

These are my people.

What would possess a person to interfere with a conversation and forcefully, confidently and without prompting, tell the conversants they are ignorant and wrong and lucky to have such a person in their presence?

Oh, I don’t know, maybe the same thing that would possess a person to say hello to every hiker he passes on a trail, or offer one-liners to every cashier he interacts with on a daily basis. Being an old. Being a man.

Look on my inability to sense awkwardness, ye mighty, and despair!

The downside of a collection of old men in the same building? It’s the expertise.

Why do old men love old cars? Because they are, among other things, knowable.

But often, the idea that a thing can be known to a degree exponentially higher than others know is reductive and tiresome.

That’s not the engine it came with from the factory.

Those are after-market mirrors, I’da kept the originals.

Alternator needs to charge to 13.5 or it’s bad.

Look on my expertise, ye mighty, and despair!

And yet, in the same building lives something generative, alive and good.

At their best, classic cars represent a shared knowledge. When we look at a car, we see a common history. We are transported to the roads we tore down on the way to and from school. We are listening to the radio at the drive-in, surveying the other cars driving up and down Main street.

Here we are. Here I am. This vehicle is a representation of my self. I chose it. I drive it. I work on it. I rebuilt it or repainted it or earned enough money one Summer to put a bigger engine in it. I see your car and acknowledge your place in the world—you are a Camaro guy. But reciprocity demands that you acknowledge that I too have a place—I am a Mustang guy.

It is a thing we grasp at, but also a thing we can touch.

It is physical, controllable, breakable, fixable, improvable.

It is self-expression in visual, touchable, movable, audible and smellable form.

It’s nostalgia.

A memory of a time that is personal but shared by people who have never met.

Movies, music, gas pumps, junkyards.

All the same. All unique to me.

It’s color.

Not filters.

Vibrant and alive.

Just like we were.

And the stories. Why did so many of the stories my grandfathers told involve pickups or cars I would never see?

Because they were perfect. Not in the sense of condition or dependability. In the sense of complete and appropriate. Of course the car that broke down all the time broke down at the funniest possible times. Of course he sold the fastest pickup he ever owned, it was too fast to keep.

Of course my old Mustang ran out of gas all the time—it was driven by the most aloof kid in Briscoe County.

Among the vehicles I was most enamored with was a gloriously customized station wagon whose owner, Chris, introduced himself and asked if I could send him a few of the pictures I was taking. Happy to.

While I was crouched down at the tail light studying angles, an old man walked by and said to me, “Heh, looks like that dumb Chevy Chase movie car!”

I mentally scrolled for Chevy Chase movie cars. There’s a 68-ish powder blue Lincoln Continental in Christmas Vacation. Doesn’t sound right.

Oh wait, there’s the Family Truckster from Family Vacation. The hideous green and brown-paneled station wagon switched after baiting the not-old-yet Clark Griswold.

“The Truckster?” I asked incredulously.

“Yeh, heh heh,” he said as he trucked off.

Look upon my inability to distinguish between things I don’t like, ye mighty, and despair!

Of course we are often wrong. We forget the shortcomings. Mostly our own. We are heroes of our own stories. And why not? After all, our enemies are all gone.

We are old men. Not dead men, yet.

---

Ozymandias

by Percy Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Of course, my first instinct is to say “No”.

Years of being an old man in personality, and now physically, have conditioned me to bah-humbug any suggestion of enjoyment—especially when it involves leaving the house. But against my better judgment, when Gracie texted “Weather is going to be nice Monday, we should go to the canyon for a walk,” I relented, for fear that my text messages would be read some day after my death and my legend would be tarnished by the facts of my curmudgeonly ways.

Alas, Monday came. It always does. I wrapped up work by 3 o’clock and headed home. School was out for the holiday, and now that she could drive, she’d had been running errands and seeing friends on her own. We would meet up and head out.

I wondered on the drive home whether this would be a walk or a hike. Walking is for treadmills, anything else is work. At least that’s my ingrained attitude from working on a ranch for so long. If it’s at the ranch, it’s work. If it’s at a State Park, like Palo Duro Canyon, it’s a hike.

So, I wore my work clothes—jeans and a t-shirt.

Gracie, however, was wearing shorts. She mocked my jeans immediately, and I countered that the outdoors were no place for exposed legs. Then, it occurred to me that everyone out there would be in shorts but me. This was, after all, a park, not a set of corrals or a fence line. We weren’t following cattle trails, but well-maintained pathways. So, shorts were her choice, jeans mine. I prepared to be laughed at by the hikers.

President’s Day 2024 was possibly the most pleasant day, weather-wise, in the Texas Panhandle of the year so far. No (!) wind. Warm, not hot. Sun out, but still following its relaxed Wintry low trajectory, not the broiler-element position of the Summer. The low angle light made everything a little more colorful.

We pulled up to the check-in booth and I showed off to her by pulling my state park card out of my wallet. Of course I have a membership, the park is only a few miles from our house and I’m a seasoned outdoorsman—years of ranching, cycling, photography meant I knew all the secrets.

“This expired in September,” the ranger kindly informed me.

Fine, so I’m actually a card-carrying poser. My kids have known it for a while, you should too.

Membership renewed for another year—good intentions, right?—we proceeded down the canyon road—always steeper than you think—always narrower than most tourists are competent to handle.

I accepted the tourist map and day-pass sticker, but I was at least experienced enough to know where we were going to park. On my last visit, does math, 18 months ago, I took a walk off the parking area that serves as a trailhead for the famous Lighthouse trail. If you know anything about the Panhandle, it’s probably either the Lighthouse, Cadillac Ranch or the wind. Unfortunately, just a few weeks later it would become nationally known for catastrophic wildfires because the weather does not stay as calm as it was that day.

I knew the other trails off this parking area were varying levels of difficulty, and that Lighthouse trail was a tough one—I had never even tried it. I hate to admit that, I’ve actually designed logos using other people’s pictures of the landmark, I’m ashamed to admit that despite living just a few miles away for the previous 15 years, millions of tourists had seen it and I had not. After all, the map said it was harder.

I asked Gracie to read the map and tell me if one of the easy ones was near that same trailhead parking area. Sure enough, one was. Valle de Rio. It would be a good one for a fair weather walk—and that’s what we had signed up for.

The lot was busy, but not full, so it looked like a nice enough thing to be doing at 3:30 on a holiday afternoon.

I had packed water bottles in the pickup, but carrying one sounded annoying, especially on an “easy” trail. Lighthouse was labeled “moderate” so, sure, water on that one, not on Valle de Easy. Plus, these were plastic water bottles—I know. I imagined the scornful looks of the seasoned State Park visitors as we sipped from the non-biodegradable bane of the outdoor-conscious person’s existence.

We locked the pickup and headed to the bunny slope.

10 steps in its direction, I said “Oh! My camera!” and turned back to the pickup. The whole point of even going outdoors at this point in my life is to take pictures.

I geared up—the same camera and lens I had taken on our trip to Europe last Summer. I had gotten used to holding it on a record-setting trip, especially in the area of steps per day. Our personal bests were on the day we trucked throughout Paris: the Louvre; the rainy streets; from and back to a hotel in what our French tour guide called “the, how-you-say, sketch part of town.”

Palo Duro Canyon was not sketch this day. And something told me we’d regret not taking advantage of it.

“Hey, let’s just start the Lighthouse trail, go about halfway, so we’ll know what it’s like. We can come back and do the whole thing later, right?” I pitched.

Gracie was game. So we did.

If you leave a parking lot on foot, and everyone you pass walking the opposite direction is smiling, you might misinterpret those as friendly or enlightened smiles, especially when you know there’s something cool on the other end of the trail.

But what they’re actually smiling at is the fact that they can, finally and mercifully, see their cars in that parking lot.

I would figure this out about 3 hours later.

I play up the “old man out of shape” angle every chance I get. But honestly, at that point I had been walking quite a bit—New Year’s Resolution. Plus, I had given up some bad habits and spent more time outside than usual. It helped me to think and be present.

So, walking a “moderate” trail was not too concerning. Besides, we figured the park called it “moderate” to discourage all the tourists from crowding the trail. It was probably just a long walk. After all, all those people were smiling!

The low Winter light cast lovely shadows on the first canyon walls we approached.

I had been trying to work more black-and-white photography into my practice. The shadows and stratified rock were perfect subjects.

Our Apple watches notified us we had walked a mile, though it had taken a while—24 minutes. Mostly because I stopped a lot for pictures, but this was a walk, not a hike, so it was okay by me.

And I was feeling pretty good, Gracie too, so we continued. Wait—we’re halfway to the Lighthouse—seemed silly to stop now!

The frequency of pictures slowed as the walk got more focused. The weather was still lovely, but the ups and downs, rocky trail and sandy crags were adding up, little by little.

There are markers on the trail, tall, thin, blue plastic lines with “L” and the distance from the trailhead stickered to their tops. At “L 1.5” we spotted the Lighthouse.

How cool! This was going to be the day I finally saw it up close!

At “L 1.75” I commented “that thing sure looks farther than a quarter-mile.” To which Gracie replied “It’s not 2 miles, the map said 2 hours.”

Oh

Wait.

Well.

I am the kind of old now that swears I hear—or don’t hear—things that others—especially the women with whom I live—tell me they did or did not say.

Every day, it seems, I hear or don’t hear something. I could dismiss the not hearing—ears being decaying instruments and all—but hearing new things gives me hope that my mind is still creative. After all, it seems to be creating new conversations all the time!

This was one of those. A 2-hour moderate hike is not the same as a 2-mile walk. A 2 mile walk gets you somewhere is 40 minutes or less. That was what I heard, and why I was feeling so confident. A 2-hour hike is nothing I would have ever agreed to. Much less 2 hours out, then 2 more hours back in.

So, the thought crept back in, how far is far enough for today?

I didn’t say anything, just kept plugging along, but it was turning into a hike now, as we passed “L 2” with the goal still in the distance.

Honestly, what kept me going at this point was that each time I hung my head I could still see, between the tears, the imprints of a pair of New Balance shoes. And I thought, “If some old grandpa could keep going, then so can I!”

Trail etiquette is always interesting to me, as an admitted outsider. From the get-go, I had to restrain myself from saying “Hello!” to every one we passed. After being unable to hold it back a few times, the teenage girl in front of me mocked me endlessly, so I tamed it back down. Now, my friendliness was slowed by my rapid heart rate and inability to focus my pupils. That and the constant thought “why didn’t I bring water again?”

We were hiking.

The closer you get to the Lighthouse, the harder it is to follow the trail. It narrows significantly, and the rise to the landmark is substantial, at least compared to the rest of the trail. We were close enough now to hear voices from on top of the plateau. Kids laughing. We couldn’t see them, only the thick brush that moats the upward approach. That, and a few hikers coming the other way—not smiling. On we went.

The blue markers had ended. Now, there were pink ribbons tied to tree branches at each turn in the increasingly steep and canopied trail. Markers for directions or memorials of middle-aged men lost over the years? No way to know.

Gracie in the lead, the trail eventually went past the thing, then wrapped around the side—and it was getting steep. We kept moving, but both made the mistake of glancing down to check our heart rates on our watches—it was going to be a personal record kind of day.

Midway up the steepest climb of the day, we paused. We could still hear the kids above, but then the sound stopped. We were on a narrow part of a steep trail and anticipated those brats coming down soon. Still, we rested, trying to calm our breath and decide whether or not we were facing a decision.

Gracie took a peek while I spoke kindly to my heart and asked it not to explode. She thought maybe it was lot farther than originally understood. Besides, the kids were not coming by us—it occurred to us both that we might not be on the right trail. No view of the Lighthouse, no sign of those laughing punks. Had we gotten lost?

I offered to take a look, climbed a few more feet and behold—through the fog of exhaustion and despair shone the Lighthouse.

We helped each other up the final few feet and there it was.

The fair-weather walk had turned into a bucket-list day.

---

The hike back was long—but in a different way. Everything looked better, clearer. The air felt more real. We noticed the temperature rise and fall with the elevations. We moved quickly, more lightly, though tired.

As the sun descended, its rays turned golden and illuminated the canyon walls in a light that asks to be felt as much as seen.

We smiled a lot.

Especially when we got to the parking lot.

Back in the pickup, halfway out of the park, I commented that 2 hours 35 minutes, my watch’s measurement of the walk, was pretty impressive for a trip that was supposed to be 2 hours each way!

“I think it was supposed to be 2 hours total,” she said, like a nurse consoling a patient.

Kind of wish I had not heard that.

In 2024, I really want to get into playing the lottery. All the suckers play the numbers, so I’ll commit to the scratch-offs.

In 2024, I will delete email. Not just the spam. Not just the endless list of men’s clothing retailers who send bi-daily updates about Japanese socks because I once signed up to get that 5% discount. And not just the work-related emails that have nothing to do with me. No, in 2024, I’m deleting all email.

Even the app.

Can you imagine getting that Sunday night itch to check email, to see what the world/plague of locusts has done behind your back over the weekend, then just not finding the app anywhere on your phone? So you go to the computer and type in gmail.com or hotmail.com or aol.com—I SAY A-O-L-DOT-COM—and get the usually-cursed-but-now-blessed 404 error?

Then you can just go back to scrolling Instagram reels! Until that Slack notification comes up.

Think I’ll delete Slack too.

And as a heads up, I’m deleting social media. This is my preemptive strike in case I block you—you should post this same message to all your followers at the first of the year, just in case.

And while I’m at it, I’ll delete all the apps I hate. Especially Phone. That Phone app stresses me out more than all the others. Surely someone has a hack that will give it that shaky negative sign that gives my thumb tap the power of the Thanos snap over the Phone app.

I probably should not do any of that. And you should not either.

But then again, the only resolution to which I’m truly committed in 2024 is deleting “Should”.

Jessica Abel was the first person I heard refer to the “Should Monster”.

As a coach for creatives, her audience includes folks who write, design, draw, paint, communicate through other media, but primarily, folks who feel, work and express themselves. And she knows that those people often feel the weight of expectation and obligation—not just placed upon themselves by friends, family, society—but by themselves.

“I should write a book.”

“I shouldn’t waste time writing a book when there are bills to pay.”

Just like that, the Should Monster is born.

But the Should Monster isn’t just the guilt we put on ourselves. No, the Should Monster is big enough to share with everyone.

My child should know better.

My spouse should know that I…

My family shouldn’t expect me to…

My co-workers should…

That TPS report should be turned in with a cover sheet.

That solution I offered you should have worked.

You should not make New Years Resolutions.

Should is sneaky.

Although we tend to use it on others, more than we realize, it’s especially harmful when we use it on ourselves.

If I’m telling myself what I should and shouldn’t do, I’m trying to be right and wrong at the same time.

I’m right enough to know the morally superior act, but wrong for not doing it. We are dis-integrating our selves.

I bristle at shoulds when given as free, unrequested advice. Feels like an anticipatory “I told you so” and not actual advice.

What’s the difference between good advice and bad advice? Good advice is about you, bad advice is about me.

There’s no shortage of advice in this Content-generation Generation. It’s funny that the people who are the quickest to dole out health and financial tips are the ones who have learned the least. True wisdom is not trying to impress you, it’s trying to help you. Both my grandfathers told me “Wear sunscreen and a wide-brimmed hat”, not “You should probably wear sunscreen and a wide-brimmed hat”. They weren’t trying to get a sponsorship deal with complexion-enhancers, they were telling me the hard lesson learned from skin cancer.

Should is not a helping word, it’s a control word. A handle on a weapon. Used to exert power by someone who is afraid they are losing something—control, authority, respect. And again and again, it’s used by ourselves on ourselves. The challenge is how to react. Because the natural response is to say “it shouldn’t be this way”.

Should is sneaky.

So I’m going to stop should-ing and start willing.

When I hear “should” this year, I’ll challenge the idea a little. “Why?” Seems like a lot of should ideas wither with a little challenge. If the answer goes to a negative place, I’ll dismiss it. Trash it. It’s a thing that needs to be gone. I’ll put it away. It’s a thing that takes up space until I do.

If it’s good, true, kind, then I’ll figure out how to make it a “will”. Not out of moral obligation or fear of failure. Just because it’s a good idea that will help.

I’m betting that challenging the shoulds in my mind will reduce the shoulds I hand out to others.