Do a rope

How to do a rope.

A spider web, invisibly interconnected,

Points intertwined

Becomes visible only upon close examination

Or when the misting morning fog settles

On the strands

And makes it impossible to miss the tapestry

The design of life

Entirely, totally random

And yet not.

Two points connected by a thread

The vibrations picked up, transmitted

between the two.

There’s more than you can see,

there’s always more than you can see.

We all claw along our strings,

going this way or that.

Pulling ourselves

up or

down or

side to side

With intention.

“But, I have no control,” you say.

Just because you can’t see

doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Try this,

Do a rope.

Hold a rope in your hands,

grasp it firmly and with all your might,

every last resource of your being,

use it to try and push yourself away.

The rope will flop, lifeless and limp, and you won’t move an inch,

no matter how hard you try.

Now, pull the rope to you.

Use all your strength, all your purpose,

and focus and bravado and charm.

One of two things will happen.

You’ll stay exactly where you are

pulling the rope to you,

piling it on the ground at your feet,

going nowwhere.

Or

You’ll start moving, but only if

your rope is tied to something

somewhere

or someone.

Anchored.

Sometimes, you’ll start moving,

pulling yourself along the rope,

toward the end.

Sometimes, you’ll stay still,

pulling the end towards yourself.

And sometimes, you and the end,

will both move, inch by inch,

toward each other.

That’s life.

That’s how to do a rope.

Pandemic haircuts

Cutting hair when you can’t get a haircut.

“I need a haircut,” he says. “Dad, can you cut my hair?”

COVID-19 closed all the hair places down. I was assigned hair cutting duties since I am a cutter, of sorts, but not of the hair cutting kind. If you need a tree cut, I’m your man. Hair though? That’s hard with a chainsaw.

Ever since the pandemic started we’ve all had to do things differently. I hate it when my hair gets in my eyes, and I use that basic measure to determine when to get a cut. My wife and I have three sons, 4, 6 and 8 years old, and our 6-year-old has decided that what works for Dad is good enough to work for him.

“Look, it’s in my eyes Dad,” he pulls his hair down in front of his eyes.

“Oh man,” I say, “how do you see with that mop on your head?”

“Ya, I know. Can you cut it?” he says, dropping the mop and giving me a look.

“Ok, sure,” I say. My personal philosophy toward the hacking of hair is: if I mess it up bad enough, we can just shave it off. And after you shave it off it’s gonna grow back. Why not give it a go?

“Dad. Hair.” he says again.

“Right, let’s go upstairs then and see what we can do,” I reply.

Here’s what we need to cut hair: an electric razor, 13 weird-looking clippy-type guards, a second razor with 5 different cutting attachments, 5 additional weird-looking clippy-type guards, a comb, 3 pairs of scissors, and an extension cord to reach the tub.

“Ok, get in the tub,” I point to the tub. He jumps in.

What happens next is my best attempt at copying what I’ve seen done about 137 times at various hair places. We agree on one of the electric razors and a clippy-type guard. I start at the bottom and run the thing up along the side of the head, pulling up right where the skull starts to curve to flat. I won’t go past the curvy point unless I’m doing a shave job and Mom has made it very clear that a shave job is only to be done as a last resort, so I’m being careful. I go around all the sides and stop at his face.

“How’s it feeling?” I ask. Always make sure the customer is comfortable.

“Good,” he says. “But I’m a bit itchy.”

Ah. I had him strip to his underwear to save getting hair on his clothes so now there’s hair all over his shoulders and down his back. “Hold on,” I say.

I grab the small hand broom thing from one of the razor kits and start brushing away the hair on his shoulders.

“Ouch,” he says.

“That hurts?” I ask.

“Ya,” he replies as I’m jamming the thing into my arm to test it out. Ouch. That hurts.

“Ok, I’ll be more careful,” I say.

The next step is to get the hair wet. I’m not 100% sure why but the hair place does it, so we do it, too. “Time to get your hair a bit wet,” I say and grab a handful of water from the sink on the other side of the room. I kind of slap it down on his head and pet him like a dog to spread the water out. He picks up what I’m trying to do and starts running one hand through his hair, back and forth and back and forth, to help soak his mop.

“Looks good,” I say, “now I’m going to take some off the top with the scissors.”

“Ok,” he says. I’ve gotta give him credit, he’s brave.

The top proves harder to manage than I expect. I’m trying to grab bunches of wet hair with the fingers of my left hand and cut with the scissors in my right. The problem is that the wet hair is sticking to his head. Then I remember that the hair people usually have a comb, too.

“I need a comb,” I wipe my forehead and start looking through a colorful basket on the back of the toilet with a hairbrush and about 45 moisturizing-type spritzing things in it.

“Dad, there’s a comb in the razor bag,” he says.

“Razor bag?” I raise my right eyebrow. “Where…?”

“The black thing,” he points somewhere.

“This thing?” I grab a plastic case with 12 weird-looking clippy-type guards in it.

“Ya,” he says.

The case is open, so I rummage around in it and see a thick black comb. “Here,” I lift the comb up to the light to make sure it is what it is.

“How did you know there was a comb in there?” I ask.

“I saw it,” he says.

“Smart boy,” I say, moving back to the tub to get back to it.

The comb seems to help. I’ve got the scissors on my right hand, hooked to my pointer finger and thumb; these fingers are also holding the comb. I find the comb works well to scoop up the wet hair up to my left hand which can then pinch the clump kind of like I’m holding a hard shell taco. I pull up a bit with the left to keep the hair off the skull and do a juggling-type move with my right hand, rolling the comb into my palm with my pinky and ring fingers and cutting the hair with the scissors on my pointer finger and thumb. Snip.

I work my way around his scalp, trying to cut the hair the height of the pinky finger, the ring finger and the middle finger on my left hand all stacked up. Keeping the scissors from cutting my own fingers or his head takes up all my focus. Soon, I decide to ditch the “three finger measure” method for the “ballpark measure” method.

We’re about an hour in at this point and there’s no going back. The hair is drying out and I find that the dry hair is easier to work with. I’m not sure why the hair people get your hair wet before cutting it, maybe they like a challenge.

I go over the whole head with my left hand ballparking everything to make sure it’s the same length. Small snips here, small nips there.

“We’re looking good,” I say. No obvious chunks are missing and there’s no blood or tears which means we’re winning.

Time to move onto the bangs. These are super easy.

“Ok, close your eyes, I’m going to do the front,” I say.

“Ok, Dad,” he replies.

I take the hair over his forehead with my left hand. Put the comb down with my right and make sure I’ve got the scissors on tight. This close to eyes you’ve really gotta watch out. Holding the scissors vertically I make little stabbing-type cuts, back and forth and back and forth, all the way across his forehead, grabbing new clumps of hair with my left hand as I go. The little stabs back and forth give the finished hair an uneven, messy kind of appearance. I think of this as the “trendy look.”

Another way of cutting bangs is to cut them in a straight line right across the forehead. I think of this as the “robot look” which is pretty healthy but not what we go with today.

“Right, looking good, eh?” I ask.

“Ya, Dad, but I’m itchy,” he swipes a gob of hair off his shoulder. “Can you do that blower thing?” he asks.

“Blower thing?” I reply. “What blower thing?”

“You know, the one Mom has,” he says.

“A hair dryer?” I ask.

“Ya…” he answers.

I stand up, wipe the obvious hair off my legs and open the bathroom door. There’s a blow dryer on the bed so I grab it and bring it back into the bathroom.

“This?” I ask.

“Ya,” he says.

“Good idea,” I plug in the blower thing, point, and shoot blasting all the hair right off of him.

“Ok, almost done. Hold on tight and don’t move,” I say.

We’re nearly home free now, just gotta clean up the edges. I trade the first electric razor for the second electric razor and switch the cutting attachment over to the one that looks like a little mini razor head. I triple check the instructions to make sure this is the one that doesn’t cut skin when you touch it. I found out the difference in cutting heads the hard way, one time I got a bit too close with the wrong one. Don’t want to make that mistake again.

The key to cleaning the edges out is to keep part of your hand anchored to the head. You can slowly and carefully trace the outside edge of the hair to give it a clean look. Hair over the ears is my second big indicator of needing a haircut, so I make sure to carve those ears out real well. You’ve gotta be careful going up over the ear though, it’s really easy to get carried away, cut in too high too deep and then end up needing to throw away all your hard work by salvaging with a shave job.

I restrain myself and the back of his head cleans up pretty nicely.

“Well, what do you think?” I ask.

“It looks good,” he replies.

“Now,” I say, “you want to cut mine?”

“Ok,” he says.

We agree on one of the electric razors and a weird-looking clippy-type guard. I strip to my underwear to save getting hair on my clothes and get in the tub beside him and kind of hunker down a bit.

“Here’s how you turn it on,” I say, pointing to the sliding black switch on the side. “Make sure you don’t push really hard because you could pop the guard off and cut me. Look, try popping this thing off,” I say, pointing to the black guard.

He tries to pull the guard off and can’t. I find that a bit comforting and hope it means he’s less likely to snap the guard off and dig the razor directly into my head.

He turns the razor on BZZZZZZZZ and starts making little baby bird pecks with it.

“No, not like that. Like this,” I say, making a longer smoother motion with my hand.

“Ok,” he says.

I try to keep as low as I can sitting in the bathtub so he can cut wherever he wants. It doesn’t really matter what he does, since he’s giving me a shave job. He might as well have some fun with it, you know?

BZZZZZZZZ, the razor echoes off the bathroom walls, surrounding us.

Hair falls like snow all around me. I’m looking at the bottom of the tub, hunkered down. All I can see are his tiny, little feet shuffling back and forth and back and forth, working to get the best angle. The hair is sticking all over his feet which makes them look like a hairy man’s feet but shrunk down to 6-year-old size. These are the feet he’s going to have when he’s grown, when he’s a man.

I’m warm and cold. We’re slow dancing in a bathtub during a pandemic that shut the whole world down. Me with my boy and his hairy little man feet. Maybe he’ll have kids, when he fills his feet. I wonder what he’ll be like. How often will I see him? These feet, they’ll change the world. Hairy little man feet that could be anything, that could do anything. He keeps shuffling, back and forth and back and forth. I think he’s humming.

BZZZZZZZZ, the vibrations are like music, filling us.

I don’t know what the future will bring. It’s big and it’s scary. I know there will be love and laughter, pain and tears. For some reason, a chill creeps over me. My stomach pushes itself up it into my throat. Lots of people are dying right now. What if he doesn’t make it? What if I’m not there?

Not now. I’m losing myself. People are always dying. People are always living, too. These things are life. I can decide which road to take, so I choose the path that brings me back to slow dance with my son.

Presents. The razor. The bathtub. My son. My self. The dance. The pandemic. Time.

Here, together. Both of us in the bathtub, both of us in our underwear. The razor singing. His hairy little feet dancing. And I am remembering to never forget our pandemic haircuts. This might be the closest we ever get in our whole entire lives.

Goals

We all have the same power, it lies within each of us. What are you going to do with it?

My goal is to contribute to society at scale. What contributions would I like to make? I want to eliminate mindless, unnecessary work. I want to inspire people to become self-aware, to stop working for a wage and start working for themselves. I want to teach people. I want people to believe in themselves. I will seek out, connect to and work with like-minded individuals to amplify my impact.

I have the audacity to think I matter. I believe that one person can change the world. I believe that we need to stop looking to others to find the next Nelson Mandela, the next Muhammed Ali, the next Seth Godin.

We all have the same power, it lies within each of us and I am willing to lean in and embrace the tremendous responsibility that it requires. I navigate life using a moral compass, and work to help others find their way leading by example.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world,” right?

I am ready.

Let’s get to work.

“What do you do?”

What I say when I’m asked, “What do you do?”

I work at mind altering heights dangling from a gigantic mechanized fishing rod, or even closer to space hanging from thousands of teeny hairs twisted together, or as a target under multiple sky workers cutting thousands of pounds of debris near me on towering, water-filled conductive plants near power lines with enough electricity to kill me 10,000 times over.

I work with razor sharp cutting implements that could cut of any of my limbs off in an instant. I drag tree body parts over muscle tearing, joint popping terrain, day in and day out. I feed the tree bodies into enormous people-shredding machines on roads packed with clueless zombies and wheeled steel coffins driven at break-necking speeds by oblivious distracted people that cannot see me.

I do not need to do this work. I choose to do this work. I want to do this work. I love to do this work.

This is not work.

This is life.

My mouth drools in anticipation of the challenges this life offers. I look forward to pushing myself past the limit of my abilities to finish what I start. I savor the obstacles fate puts in my path and use them to sharpen my skills and strengthen myself.

What do I do? I challenge myself to take this life to dare greatly and to pursue the triumph of high achievement. What will I do? In the end, I will lay peacefully, knowing I’ve spent myself in a worthy cause.

Your God

Stop searching

looking up to the sky

looking to others

Stop and look in.

And realize the truth.

You’re God.

Be careful now, do not mistake, always out never in,

I am not God,

Never I, never me,

Only You

It is the truth, You know it in Your soul.

Big and scary and suffocating and exhilarating and beautiful.

Everything in Your life has brought You to this moment.

You’ve followed the plan You’ve laid out for Yourself perfectly

and landed right here.

So, for God’s sake,

do something about it.

The world,

Your world,

needs fixing.

So fix it.

Do it for You

or do it for us

it doesn’t matter,

just do it.

And take Your gift and teach it to Us

Together We can all make Our world

Heaven.

Gold River

The things that happen.

I zipped the top of my head off

like a box of sardines.

A small man jumped out

that man was me.

The blank page was like a sheet of ice

I skated around

swooping

jumping

spinning

free

My feet, it was amazing,

I couldn’t control my feet.

They were possessed.

Something had taken control of my feet.

It wasn’t me.

The Big Me

top off my head

I just watched it all

And then looked at my hand

which was gripping a clock

gripping so hard that the tips of my fingers

broke the face

jammed the arms

so they stopped.

The sharp arms of the clock

cut into me

and the blood turned black

when it hit the sheet.

Then Little Me

I got the blood on my feet

And danced around

in full out of control

I realized

the marks I was leaving were letters

then words

then lines of this prose

the source of which I did not know.

Little Me tired

and the blood ran dry

so I jumped in my head and

zipped it back closed.

My grip on the clock loosened

a bit

And the hands started moving.

The face healed itself.

I licked my lips and hung it back on the wall

where it watched me

eat a Larabar.

Carrot juice

I changed today

but nobody saw it.

One of those “AH-HA” type moments

vibrating along the wires.

You might have kids, but you’re not a father.

You might have a wife, but you’re not a husband.

Not until you act like one.

So, how do you act?

Do you stay at work, consumed with opportunity?

Do you get angry and yell, or give time and teach?

These things, these things that you do, you do it to yourself

you do.

Don’t you?

A teammate quits.

Can you blame him?

No.

It’s your own damn fault. Too busy measuring, planning, scheming.

You think it’s all fine, as long as the bus is travelling down the road

Forget the fact that the wheels came off awhile ago

and you can’t stop

and there are babies in the road ahead.

“WHO LEAVES THEIR BABIES IN THE ROAD?” you scream.

You did.

Too focused on that carrot

you chase

every day.

You’re going to run the babies over. And lose them all.

Don’t change for the better.

Change for the present.

It’s all rented

your couch

your expensive dogs

your white fireplace

your library of books

your fast car

your jacked up truck

your big clean house

your shiny watch

your trendy shoes

your spotless driveway

your holy underwear

your wedding ring

your fucking job

your stress sweat

your scars

your itchy crotch

your stubby fingers

your perfect finger nails

your frizzy hair

your slanted smile

your slightly crossed eyes

your friends

your feelings

your diagnoses

your disease

your sickness

your wellness

your health

your notebook

your money

your name

your time

your things

these

these things

these things are

these things are all

these things are all rented

you

you own

you own nothing

you own nothing except

you own nothing except

you own nothing except

 

you

Love you do

Your feelings? Stuff them.

Love isn’t something you feel. Love is something you do.

Show up. Stay the course. Persist.

“I love you,” means:

Food

Shelter

Water

Protection

“I am here.”

Love

Love takes effort. Effort requires work. Love is work.

“What about feelings?”

What about them. Other people’s feelings for you are a consequence of your actions.

When you act like you love someone

they will love you.

So don’t be surprised that when you stop doing love

that they stop loving you.

You’re standing there with your arms full of wood

demanding that the sticks piled on the ground give you heat

before you’ll give them a spark.

Love and you’ll be loved.

You make the choice.

Hurt or injured

There’s a question I ask

when I see him fall

Something that separates

me from them all.

“Is he hurt or injured?”

I ask myself

and the answer I give

is a guide to my help.

 

If he’s hurt, he’s ok, though a little bruised up

Some tears and a Band-Aid

And he cheers right up

So I won’t jump in

and make a show of it all

I hang right back

and let him make the call.

His life’s not in danger,

so some space he will get

To think his things over

and choose his upset.

 

If he’s injured, he’s down and out for the count

And I’ll come a running, and probably shout,

“HOLY SHIT, WHAT DID YOU DO THAT FOR?”

Then roar to the truck and throw open the door.

The hospital knows when they see us there,

to jump us to the front of line up in chairs.

And call for a doctor and at least one nurse

And to start making arrangements for some kind of hearse.

 

Life is tough and you’re going to lose

if you get hurt and need to stop for a bruise.

And you’ll also lose out on life if you wait

when you’re injured and pounding on Heaven’s gate.