From the Backseat: Deaths of Despair

Did you see the news? Last week, in the town of Sherman, police arrested three people in connection with a meth lab. It was the 123rd incident of its kind in Maine in 2016. That’s more than double the number last year; in 2015 Maine had 56 meth lab-related incidents.

And then on Friday a Hebron man killed his 27-year-old daughter before taking his own life. Did you see that too?

This is the news today, constant radar blips of “the way life should be.” They are markers an assistant professor at Penn State told me about recently: she calls them “deaths of despair.” And Maine is full of them.

Shannon Monnat is a rural demographer. About a month ago I interviewed her for a story about the heroin epidemic. I came across her research on addiction rates and how they relate to a community’s economic prospects. “Deaths of despair” is the phrase she’s coined for spiking addiction, alcoholism and suicide rates across America.

But rates don’t spike equally. Urban centers are largely spared this crisis. Drug addiction today is a rural problem, and the impact is felt heaviest in the rural communities and small cities that have struggled in the global economy.

Small cities. Rural places. Hmm. Sounds like Maine. Go on…

“These small cities and rural towns have borne the brunt of declines in manufacturing, mining, and related industries and are now struggling with the opiate scourge,” said Monnat. “In these places, good jobs and the dignity of work have been replaced by suffering, hopelessness and despair, the feeling that America isn’t so great anymore, and the belief that people in power don’t care about them or their communities. Here, downward mobility is the new normal.”

Suffering. Hopelessness. Despair. The new normal. 123 meth labs in a year. Murder-suicides. We are watching the effects unfold daily, on the news and in our communities. Each event acts as a radar blip. Misery is a tough pill to swallow, and as a meal to eat every day, it’s poison. But when job prospects seem hopeless it’s easy to sink into despair.

Monnat’s analysis doesn’t end there. Her most recent research looks at the 2016 presidential race, comparing election data with addiction data. And what she found is striking: counties awash in misery, those rural communities and smaller cities plagued by higher addiction rates, came out for Donald Trump.

“Clearly there is an association between drug, alcohol and suicide mortality and Trump’s election performance,” said Monnat, though she cautioned the relationship is a complex one. “What these analyses demonstrate is that community-level well-being played an important role in the 2016 election, particularly in the parts of America far-removed from the world of urban elites, media and foundations.”

“Ultimately, at the core of increasingly common ‘deaths of despair’ is a desire to escape,” she continued, “escape pain, stress, anxiety, shame, and hopelessness. These deaths represent only a tiny fraction of those suffering from substance abuse… Drug and alcohol disorders and suicides are occurring within a larger context of people and places desperate for change. Trump promised change.”

Despair, it seems, has political implications in addition to societal.

This almost shouldn’t be news. Every day we get signals about this despair. Some are small—another drug death, another mill shutdown, another suicide—while others are large, the 2016 election outcome being the most prominent. Sitting in quasi-urban Portland, a small city somehow buoyed by its quaint appeal and its status as a haven for NYC exiles, it might be easy to forget we sit surrounded by misery. But we do. We are a rural and small city state. There is so much misery here that drugs, alcohol, suicide and Donald Trump have become rational choices, the result of living in communities where no other path seems open.

Monnat’s research states America’s problem, and Maine’s problem, succinctly: in “many forgotten parts of the U.S. (often referred to as ‘fly-over’ country by those living on the coasts),” she said, “downward mobility is the new normal.”

Despite our coastline, Maine is one big fly-over state. The evidence to that fact fills our newsfeed.

Maybe it will make tomorrow’s headlines.

This column appeared in this week’s Portland Phoenix.

Portland Phoenix: Just Don’t Fall

duo-lyra-3 “Push up. Push up from your shoulders. You’re sagging.”

I can tell I’m sagging. I’m upside-down, balanced on my hands above a concrete floor, my feet pointed at the ceiling like the cone of a rocket ship. And since I flipped into this handstand, my face has been slowly lowering. Push as I might, I can’t halt the descent. My shoulders are spent, won’t budge anymore, and as they fail I can feel my weight tipping. The tower of my body has begun swaying like a felled tree.

“Push! Tighten your butt! Push! Push! Push!” Cory is yelling at me again. He’s always yelling at me, at least when he’s within 10 paces. Otherwise, he’s yelling at somebody else. It’s not a scolding yell, it’s a coach’s yell, the shouts of encouragement that seem almost enough to suspend someone in air upside-down, like his students’ balance hinges on the volume of his instructions. He clearly sees what I’m doing wrong, and maybe a few well-timed shouts can save me.

But not this time. His yells aren’t enough. My balance has shifted, and the spell that somehow kept me standing upside-down on my hands has broken. My legs are now headed over backward towards the concrete, a tumbling fall that at this point has become familiar. I fold at the waist and twist my body, the spin coming just in time to plant my feet safely under me. I pop up, standing rightways again, my face red from exertion and the rush of blood that comes from being upside-down. Cory is nodding and smiling. “Good. Good,” he says. “Now just don’t fall.”

Just don’t fall. That seems like good advice at Circus Maine, where handstands are probably the least hazardous height someone can take a tumble from. “Just don’t fall” becomes even more important once you move to the trapeze, the aerial silks, the straps or the Chinese pole (actually two poles that stand parallel that performers bounce between).

Falling is required just to get going on the giant inground trampoline, but then the faller flies into the air at twice their original speed, suddenly giving “just don’t fall” new meaning.

Even acrobats who stack to form human towers must heed this “don’t fall” mantra. For them, a fall there takes out not only themselves but the rest of the team.

So yeah, it’s good advice, just don’t fall.

The thing is, there’s lots of falling at Circus Maine. It’s a circus school. No one is born knowing how to do a handstand, much less a one-handed handstand, much less a one-handed handstand on stage before an audience where every movement is choreographed in time with music. To get there takes falling, years and years of falling.

“It took me seven years to put my hand-balancing act together,” Circus Maine’s hand balancing instructor Cory Tabino said.

He studied handbalancing at Ecole Nationale de Cirque, the National Circus School of Montreal, for three years, and then he spent three years working for Cirque du Soleil, also based in Montreal. He’s now spent a quarter-century working as a circus artist around the world.

“I went across the Atlantic Ocean four times,” he said, doing his act on cruise ships. “The only place I haven’t performed is Antarctica.”

Now, in addition to being the lead handbalancing instructor and a professional performer (just last week he went to Japan to perform for U.S. soldiers), Tabino is also Circus Maine’s artistic director. And he’s also the head of the professional program. And he serves as a stagehand at live productions. And he organizes signature events in the Circus Maine building on Thompson’s Point. And he coordinates off-site performances for private and corporate events.

Like everyone at Circus Maine, Tabino wears many hats.

“We are the textbook definition of a startup company,” he said.

Circus Maine is a recreational circus school with both adult programs and kids programs, a professional circus training academy and an event production company. They put on monthly cabarets that bring top level performers to Portland, host a summer camp that over the past three years served more than 500 kids, and in October they held their first marquee event, a Halloween party called Mischief Night that paired circus performers swinging on silks in full costume with DJs, drinks and a dance party.

These events are anything but bland: two of the Mischief Night performances were pole dances. Two others were beautiful women in trim costumes hanging above a crowd dancing on a concrete floor. At a cabaret event in October, a couple performed on a suspended hoop in formfitting bedclothes, her wearing a slinky top and shorts that barely held her in. The pair tumbled and swung above the audience bathed in milky light; the whole performance felt like something out of a dream.

“New circus is sexy,” Joshua Oliver, the male-half of the bedclothed performance, said. “It’s very bold. It’s intoxicating.”

An instructor and performer at Circus Maine, Oliver is also the technical director and driving force behind the project. When he talks about circus he gets animated, the excitement shows in his eyes.

“We’re essentially the next generation of high-end entertainment,” he said. “We want to push the boundaries of what is considered acceptable art. I don’t think you will be bored.”

At the heart of this effort is Circus Maine’s purpose-built circus training facility in Thompson’s Point Brick North. From the outside, it’s an old brick mill building, but inside it has a trampoline, multiple lines for trapeze, padded floors and countless gymnastic mats. If ever there was a space to fall, it’s here.

But that learning space can also be converted into a performance space. And that performance space can also be converted into an events venue. The same room that hosts a dozen children practicing back flips every Tuesday night also housed a TEDx event last year in which Oliver swung from a pair of straps suspended from the ceiling in a performance that looked both Olympic and artistic. Circus Maine uses the venue to host 10 shows a year and also run their recreational program serving 120 students. Later this month they will hold their Solstice event, their first full in-house circus production, there, and on New Year’s Eve they will hold another marquee event, a 1920s Great Gatsby-themed “Red Carpet Event,” in the same space.

It’s a movement towards a type of spectacle-infused events that have become common in bigger cities, Tabino said, “but here in Maine we’re really toeing the line.”

Shows are provocative, emotive, fast-paced, beautiful. Performances infuse tremendous physical control and precise movement with an element of storytelling.

“It’s highly athletic,” Tabino said, “but it allows for individual expression.” The artistic angle is the key part. “Otherwise it’d just be gymnastics.”

That such expression is occurring at all, however, is somewhat of a surprise. Fifteen months ago the idea that Portland would host multiple circus shows in a matter of weeks seemed unlikely if not impossible. The Circus Conservatory of America, a proposed professional-level circus academy, had just turned insolvent, and Oliver, Tabino and the other professionals recruited to bring contemporary circus to Portland were out of their jobs.

But circus isn’t a normal career. No one gets into handbalancing, trapeze, juggling or clowning for the money. Contemporary circus is an art, and like any art form, it is the art itself that pulls at its practitioners. They do it for passion rather than the paycheck, performing almost out of compulsion.

Oliver is no exception. “I’ve been on stage since I was 8 years old,” he said. He discovered new circus, the intermixing of gymnastics-style physical feats with performance, in his early 20s, and it has held him ever since.

Modern circus style is an intermixing of Russian technique with French artistic tastes, according to Oliver. “We perform in theaters rather than tents,” he said, and cotton candy and elephants aren’t part of the act. “New circus is been a really important art form, an opportunity to use physical excellence as a voice.”

Circus artists create their own acts, and it takes time. It takes developing your skills and your own creative vision. It’s similar to dancing, but unlike a dancer, a circus artist choreographs their own movement. The person builds the act, Oliver said, and what you see on stage: “That’s her.”

This is a tradition with centuries of history, but it used to be passed down among families. You were either born into a circus family or you weren’t. The modern circus school is a very new thing, and it occurred in tandem with the intermixing of Russian and French influences that eventually became contemporary circus. Schools pulled elements from Moroccan and Chinese acrobats and went to seed in Canada. And it blossomed. Cirque du Soleil is the name everyone knows, and Montreal is now its the global hub.

Oliver lived in Montreal for 10 years. Like Tabino, he studied at Ecole Nationale de Cirque, Canada’s premier circus arts training institute, and then worked in the industry afterward. The Ecole and Cirque du Soleil sit side by side in Montreal, he said, and they form the left and right ventricle of contemporary circus around the world.

Oliver started circus at 22, a late arrival for the industry—at Circus Maine 12-year-olds are already eyeing the National Circus School—and his act includes aspects of the martial arts that were his passion before he found circus. He is powerfully built, and when he walks he glides across the floor, leading with his chest like a warrior headed to battle.

Which seems appropriate, because when Oliver talks about pulling Circus Maine from the ashes of Circus Conservatory of America it sounds like a battle.

“There have been at least three miracles that have allowed this project to continue,” he said. “We worked until we were bloody, and then we worked some more.”

Oliver and Tabino literally dug the hole in the floor that became Circus Maine’s inground trampoline with shovels, pulling out old railroad ties by hand, hacking them out with an ax. Oliver is a builder, and much of the work that went into renovating Brick North was done by his hands.

“I came to Maine to make this project work,” Oliver said. “I tried to build a circus school in Norway and in New Zealand. This was my third attempt.”

So when Circus Conservatory of America sank, Oliver was not ready to let go. He scraped and saved. He asked Thompson’s Point to work with him to keep a school afloat. He put on outside shows to earn extra cash, borrowed and leased and bought equipment and built what he couldn’t otherwise find, renegotiated and collaborated and asked for help.

“We opened in October of last year doing classes,” he said, and at the time the school had 21 students. It wasn’t nearly enough to make ends meet, but they kept pushing, limping their way through the holidays and into the winter.

Then in February, they held a two-hour cabaret that ran several times over a weekend. They sold 900 tickets. Suddenly it felt like ground may have materialized beneath their feet, however unsteady.

Since then Circus Maine has continued to grow. Tuesday nights are now packed with adult hand balancers (my class) falling out of handstands, a youth tumbling class and a youth trapeze class. Afterward is adult partner acrobatics and an adult tumbling class. The monthly cabarets are filling up. Shows include professional performances, and then students take the stage at intermission to grab their first chance at performing. It has a unique feel, somewhere between a family picnic and a broadway stage performance, like Cirque du Soleil descended on a Fourth of July barbecue.

“People are realizing our potential,” said Oliver. “We were international level spectacle performers. Cory and I are plugged into the source. We’re going to turn Portland into the nexus of new circus in the U.S.”

“But,” he said, “we need to create a solid community of circus artists here first.”

And, as I prepare to flip into one more handstand, that’s how it feels. Cory is across the room now. Mathias, another student in his 30s, is muttering something to himself just to my right. He and I have both flipped upside-down at least 50 times in the last 20 minutes, but neither of us seems able to hold it today. A few feet away high school phenoms Sarah and James are balancing on their hands and doing slow splits, lowering their feet inches off the ground before returning upright. Hugh, whose daughter is in the tumbling class, is on the mat flipping up into Cory’s assistant Sierra’s waiting hands. Hugh’s still working on finding his balance point, but he’s gotten much stronger. Kirsten and Ian are flipping on their own, legs waving in the air before they tumble, and Cory is striding between all of us barking instructions: “Tighten up! Point your toes! Hollowbody! Hollowbody! Squeeze your butt! Push! Push! Push!”

And of course, “Just don’t fall!”

But we all know, at Circus Maine it’s safe to fall.

This story appeared in today’s Portland Phoenix.

CDS Column: We the People

I was listening to a radio program in the car this past weekend. The subject was A.I. — artificial intelligence, computers with the capacity for thought and reason and the analytic power to surpass us a thousand-fold. The commentator was saying something about how the most important development we could engineer into artificial intelligence would be safeguards to ensure A.I. maintains moral behavior even as its abilities outpace our own. That was a prerequisite, he said, the only thing that could make artificial intelligence viable.

It sounded like a great idea. But we humans have a knack for creating things outside of our control. Take money, for example. How many lives does money rule? How many people think they never have enough, that they spend all their time chasing it and it just goes on outpacing them, never quite allows them to sit quiet? The next job might finally be enough, maybe. Just a little more work will make ends finally meet.

Money didn’t exist before us. It’s a thing humans imagined into being, and now it runs lives. It transformed from being a helpful means to facilitate the exchange into something that keeps people in a race no one wins. How did that switch happen? When did it occur? Was it always that way, or did that relationship develop over time?

Regardless, the scorecard begins: Humans, 0; our creations, 1.

Then there’s religion: Ostensibly a celebration of our existence on Earth and the unexplainable power we call God (whatever version), religion is not only a foundation for kindness, generosity and warmth but also for exclusion, hatred and genocide. Regardless of your thoughts on God, we humans created religion. And somehow we allowed it to take control of our morality and bend it to terrible purposes. The Westboro Baptist Church reads the same Bible as millions of peaceful Christians. ISIS reads the same Quran as millions of peaceful Muslims. The Catholic Church has a history of atrocious acts dating back hundreds of years. Countless wars have religious roots, as did slavery. Yes, religion does wonderful things — just look around at the holiday spirit surrounding us today, the food pantries and the charitable organizations founded in its name — but here again, one of our creations has grown beyond our control, spurring us to do terrible things.

Again: Humans, 0; our creations, 2.

And then there is government, another of our creations. This is the one that makes me laugh most. “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union …” In a moment of sheer brilliance, a group of rich, white, land-owning men crafted a country from thin air. There was no history, no common heritage to justify bonds of nationalism, and the original ties were both tentative and exclusionary — they left out women, the country’s native inhabitants and millions of slaves. Imperfect foundations to be sure, but there was something in the seed of that idea.

And that seed grew. The restrictions dissolved slowly, first for white non-landowners. Then slaves became human. Then women became voters. Then black citizens earned “equality.”

Clearly, this is among the least-nuanced American history ever put in print, but the original brilliance of America’s founding ideas were not bound to themselves. They had capacity for expansion, to grow as America’s definition of its people grew. The country was as resilient as the people who lived inside its borders.

Something great happened here, something unique. We are the inheritors of that legacy.

But then we get to the tricky task of governance, the implementation of these brilliant ideas. Today, we live in an age of dwindling trust, where the people and Washington sit on opposite sides of a chess match.

But this is an illusion. Government, like money and religion, is something we conjured. It grew from our hands, and it cannot grow bigger than us. It is an instrument created by men, designed (in our case) to be wielded by its citizens. If we have lost trust in it, it means we have lost trust in ourselves.

Government has the power to oppress us only when we let it go to seed, when we forget it is ours, borne from us, an extension as our rights as citizens, rights we named for ourselves. Its power is derived from our willingness to come together collectively, our agreeing to “form a more perfect union,” and that perfection is a reflection of our vision. “Live Free or Die” is a mantra as communal as it is libertarian, for example, our collective agreement to use government to protect our individual rights.

So what is broken government? The fetid mess that is Washington is nothing more than our willingness to allow something we were entrusted to run wild. We are essentially bad dog owners, the kind that ought to leash their pets but don’t. Who besides us let Washington run free?

We are “the People.” We came together to form this union. It has the power over us that we give it. And yet somehow we’ve fallen into a narrative where the great American experiment in democratic rule has grown beyond our power to control. We must “starve the beast,” “clear the swamp,” to combat a government gone feral.

Such claims are hollow. They pawn blame onto the spectre of “government” without taking on the responsibility of our part in creating it. If “government is broken” then the blame rests with ourselves.

The truth is managing a country of 330 million is hard. It is complex and messy. Government isn’t broken, it’s just tired of been ignored. It runs wild only out of ignorance, not malice. It needs a willing master dedicated to training it, and that master is us.

We, the people, we form this union. The sooner we stop running away from that fact the better. We’re the best safeguard this government’s got.

This column appeared in today’s Conway Daily Sun.

From the Backseat: Catfish 101

I got the weirdest note the other day. It was one of those Facebook message requests that comes from someone you aren’t friends with. Her name was Elizabeth.

“Hi there,” Elizabeth said. “This may be the strangest email I’ve ever written. I’ve been chatting with a guy on OKCupid who is using your pictures. I’m pretty sure it’s not you. The username is morethanever8.”

Next was a screenshot: a photo of me from a few years ago, taken in New Hampshire by my friend Brian when we were ice climbing. I’m wearing a red jacket, the hood is up, I’m smiling and looking right at the camera. It’s one of my favorite pictures.

But apparently, it isn’t me — across the bottom, text read “morethanever8.” My OKCupid alter ego is apparently 36 and lives in Roslindale, Mass. And his match percentage with Elizabeth was a solid 93 percent.

“If this is the guy I’ve been chatting with, why don’t you add up?” Elizabeth wrote.

I stared at my computer screen. Identity theft is not usually how I begin my mornings. I clicked refresh to see if perhaps I had misinterpreted the situation. But no, my picture was being used to lure unsuspecting women. Unbeknownst to me I was part of a catfishing expedition.

But Elizabeth was smart. She’d done some Googling. As a climber and writer, I’m pretty easy to find online. And after some reading and a spot of quick mental math, she went on Facebook. She found me and sent me a note. Catfished she wouldn’t be.

But she and morethanever8 had chatted it up a bit, and he’d given her his phone number. She included it in the note. Well played, Liz.

So I called.

It was my journalism background that made me do it. I had his number, and a good reporter does not shy away from the hard questions. As the phone rang, I felt the familiar tension in my chest of an impending argument, a feeling that marks the lead up to any contentious interview. It’s trepidation mixed with excitement, fight-or-flight by phone. Stories like these are always an adrenaline rush, and this one even more so. This time it was personal.

But morethanever8 didn’t pick up. After a handful of rings, he sent me to voicemail. His alter-ego, and yet he denied me. Who would date such a jerk? I left a message:

“Hi. I’m Erik. This is kind of awkward, but I got a note saying you’re using my picture on your online dating profile. Um, could you not? I mean, I’d kind of appreciate it if you took it down, thanks. If you want to talk about this, you have my number. Bye.”

As so often happens in online dating, I’m still waiting for him to respond. But a few hours later Elizabeth messaged to say morethanever8 had removed my photos. It was only in writing this column that I noticed her note said “pictures,” not just the singular “picture.” Eww.

I’ve told this story a handful of times now, and each telling gets a laugh. But it also raises questions. Several people have suggested Elizabeth is some sort of online dating ninja, that she couldn’t have found me based on just the pictures and maybe concocted the whole story as a ploy to get my phone number. Maybe the number I dialed was hers, people suggest.

But I don’t buy that. As a reporter I regularly find people on scant evidence. I believe Elizabeth to be my Hillary Clinton, not my Donald Trump; my pantsuited white knight rather than my con artist.

But morethanever8 I’m still confused by. Who is he? What was he thinking? Did he expect to pull off being me once it grew time for an in-person meeting? Or was this some other type of scam, one where the prize was something other than carnal? Did he know what he was doing? Would this ploy allow him to evade a meeting and thus detection?

I clearly don’t understand these things. Like some long-retired phone company employee who borrows an iPhone to make a quick call, despite my inside role I still have no idea how catfishing works. I know only that I got nothing out of it but this column.

I do, however, still have morethanever8’s phone number. Maybe I’ll try giving him another call today.

This column appeared in the Portland Phoenix.

Control

Someday I’ll write an honest story. An honest sentence. An honest word. Someday.

Sometimes driving I close my eyes. Speeding along the highway I pinch them shut and see how high I can count: one Mississippi… two Mississippi… three Mississippi… Sometimes I get to five. I’m always aiming for 10, but my fear invariably overwhelms me and my eyes snap open before I reach it. Maybe my car is a little out of its lane, but usually no. Usually I would have been safe for a few seconds more. Usually I would have lived.

I close my eyes and try again.

Reckless. Stupid. Crazy. I know. But I need it. I need it to remind myself. Because I want something different. I want control. I want to see the world, to know what’s coming, to understand it and be able to maneuver around the dangerous parts. I want to know everything speeding at me, to avoid the crash, to never be surprised, overwhelmed, heartbroken. I want my open eyes to be enough to live a life without hurt.

But it’s not. Open or closed eyes, I am going die. As fast as I may drive, it drives faster. It is coming for me, and that truth is one I’m scared of. I do my best not to be, but how do you hold out a hurricane? It is coming, and what it means I don’t know. I only know it comes bent on consumption.

So sometimes I close my eyes. Not to forget or to hide, but to make ready. Does it seem crazy, my closing? It is foolish and reckless with no possible gain. I know. I can agree with that. But it also may be my first honest word.

I love life. That is my honest sentence. I love the look and feel and sway of it, the way it kisses me awake in the mornings and slams me down some evenings. I love how the day brightens for me, how words like “precipice” roll off my tongue. There is so much amazingness, and its beauty overwhelms me.

But life is not within my control. It spins around me, a cyclone I somehow exist within. I am both part of it and at the same time separate, an inhabitant of it more than its owner. Life will never be mine to keep.

And neither is yours. Neither is anyone’s. With our eyes open we may become convinced otherwise, we may think we can wrestle some version of control, but that is the real crazy. We can’t steer. We can’t. Crazy thinking is we are in control. We can only watch the hurricane, our eyes our front porch.

I am crazy, and I am not crazy. I am only saying out loud what life whispers every day. Life is the crazy one. I am not its outlier. I am in its heart. As are all of us. This madness is all of us. You think yourself safe? Life will kill us all. Do your best to control what you will, but eventually you will see too. We will all see. We have no control.

It is terrifying, overwhelming, and freeing. There is an openness in closing our eyes and letting go of control. It carries a freedom: The freedom to be, the freedom to live, the freedom to love openly, the freedom to exist with our whole hearts. I close my eyes to embrace that vision. I close my eyes to remind myself, to see beauty, to let go of any demands and instead catch a glimpse of what surrounds me. Flying along through the madness I can see how little I need for my heart to feel joy. Suddenly perfection is everywhere, in you and in me. It needs no push, no refinement, no outside markers. It fills the room, spills into the hallway. It is overwhelming. It becomes the hurricane.

That is what I want. I do not want to control. I want to accept. I want to live. I want to walk alongside. I want to love, and to be loved, without conformity or comfort. I want to live in the wind.

I love you, and in loving you I want to control you. My eyes are open, and I want to see you, to know you, to know you will accept me and never be mad at me and never leave me. Most importantly that. I want to be loved like you want to be loved and I want to be free from hurt like you want to be free from hurt. I want. I want. I want.

But at night on the road I close my eyes. And I remember.

I do not want to control you. I only want to see you, to bear witness to who you are, to feel the pulse of your heart and the rise of your breath. To learn about you without the push or pull of my own interest. I want you to love me and only me and never anything else, but more importantly I want to not care about any of that. I want to watch you unfold, to forget your past and the future and see who you are, to be let into the guesthouse of your heart, to stand at the foot of your spinning life, to lie next to you in the whirlwind of time. No steering. No control.

For that version of love I need to be reckless. I need to fly down dark alleys and make it to 10, to 100, to 1,000. I need to let the winds come full force as I stand naked in the rain, feel the waves and blown sand rake my body. I need to let life overwhelm me and drown in its blackness. I need to let it all come, even hurt and death, and lie in peace. Let the silence slide over me. I need to lose. I need to forget. I need to fall.

And it is so hard for me. It scares me so much. I want control. I want to never hurt, never be alone, never feel anguish or loss again.

So I close my eyes. I do it to let go of fear. I do it to recover myself, to reignite my spirit, to remind me that hurt and loneliness and anguish are just more sand, more waves. If I love you out of fear I love no part of you, not even the idea of you. I love the idea that someone might see me, accept me, nothing more. You are an apparition, a placeholder. That is the place where the crazy lives.

So I close my eyes. I let go, and in letting go I learn to love fully. I learn to seek and explore without fear, to question what makes your heart shine rather than question your motives for shining. There is a recklessness to it, a foolishness. Discovering your heart and yet ignoring the urge to stay safe, rejecting the urge to control, is its own version of night-driving. It is another risk, one without gain. It is crazy, lost, bleeding. We all want to be loved. And we want that love to be steadfast, enduring.

Maybe letting go is the key. Maybe rejecting control allows two people to grow in time: If I accept you then I can watch you shift and change without it threatening me. If you can watch me shift and change too without it threatening you maybe we have a chance.

I cannot control these shifts; not in you, not even within myself. And with time yours may diverge from mine. I want to celebrate them as I celebrate you, because in truth they are you. Your growth is you. Your movement and momentary expression in the world is you. That spinning movement of self is the miracle we call life. Your body is just a vehicle, one you both live in and never own. I do not wish to own it, or you, only to honor.

But that is not our pattern. We so want others to “be themselves,” like they are some fixed thing. But they are not. You are not. You are more complex than that. How much have you changed in the last year? The last five? What are you if not those shifts?

To love you I must let you go. I must cede control. I must strive to see the person you are, not who you were or who I would like you to be. I must find your heart, your never settled, perfect, dancing heart. And if you are you you cannot be who I want you to be. Unless I only want you to be you, who you are. I cannot want to change that, even if loving you as you are means together we veer into oncoming traffic. So I forfeit control. I close my eyes. I let go of the wheel.

And perhaps I find a perfect story.

CDS Column: Conway Daily Firestarter

Do you know of Friendsgiving? It comes once a year, and it’s a holiday that serves as refuge from family holiday drama. It’s traditional observance is a day or two after Thanksgiving, and it looks a lot like Thanksgiving only calmer.

Mine came on Friday this year. I went to the house of close friends and gorged myself on turkey pot pie, turkey soup, cooked carrots, brussel sprouts and a host of other leftovers that littered the kitchen. Some of us finished a Halloween puzzle while others watched Roger Moore race across the TV, jumping speedboats and judo chopping as James Bond. The kids ran around wild-eyed, and after dinner a handful of us pulled out musical instruments for a jam session. It was what the holidays are supposed to be, with more relaxed laughter than Thanksgiving, among chosen-family not just blood relatives.

About halfway through dinner the host’s sister flashed me a smile. “I hated your column the other day,” she said as she spooned soup into a bowl. “You totally missed the point. It was bad enough that I got mad at you, and I haven’t read any of your stuff since.”

I laughed. “At least you read it,” I said. “Which one was it?”

“I don’t remember,” she replied. “But I hated it. I stopped reading after that. At this point it’s been a little while.”

We eventually sorted out the offending piece was one I wrote prior to the election. It was about locker room talk and how male culture looks at sex. I’d missed an opportunity to talk about power dynamics and the nature of sexual assault, she said. I’d totally blown it. She was calm and articulate as she explained, and all her points were valid.

“I can see that,” I said, nodding as she talked. “Yeah.”

That is one of my favorite parts about writing for a small town paper — walking into International Mountain Equipment or Front Side Grind or the North Conway post office or any of my other usual stops and having people pull me aside.

“I read your piece in the paper the other day,” is how the conversation usually starts, and from that launch point it can go anywhere. Some people love it: “Best thing you’ve written!” they’ll say. Others hate it: “Why did you even write about that?” Some point out points I didn’t have space for. Others point out points I’d never thought of. All of it is lively discussion, usually with a handshake to start and a laugh or two over the course of conversation regardless of its beginning.

There is something about writing for a small newspaper in a small town that keeps you honest. There is no avoiding your neighbors, and your neighbors are your readers. If I write something a reader doesn’t like that reader may very well see me in Hannaford, or Cranmore, or out to dinner. There is no anonymity.

I remember being a kid and going to the grocery store with my dad. We lived in a small town on the Maine coast, and he always used shopping visits as a time to catch up with people. I would stand there bored as he blabbed on, me nagging and pulling at his hand.

Now when I walk through the grocery store I’m twice the offender my dad was: I slowly make my way between handshakes and cart conversations, maybe chatting with friends but more likely getting “feedback” on some piece I’ve written.

And I love it. It’s the point of the writing, the stories, of having something to say. I have reporter friends who have realized they have to avoid the grocery store all together if they ever want to make it home for dinner.

At the outset of any conversation I am almost always driving blind. A reader has something to say, but I don’t know what piece of writing they’re talking about. After a while they all blend together, and sometimes I forget what I just wrote, much less what ran two months ago. But usually my interlocutor can navigate me to the point I was making. Other times I just do my best to carry my side of the conversation despite being totally lost. Tricky business, but oh well.

Other times the notes arrive as emails rather than in person. The feeling is still the same: “You read it? Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I’m not sure why I’m always surprised, but I am. I’m also grateful.

One occasional commenter is another Sun columnist, and no matter what his emails say I take it as the highest compliment. He could have read and then stuffed the Sun in his wood stove. So many of us do. But he didn’t. He thought it worth a word.

Again, honored.

THAT is part of what makes writing worthwhile. Writers write for readers as much as we write for ourselves. I write columns about politics, economics and social issues because I want our community (and our state, and our country) to be its best. They are not meant to chide or lambaste, but to elevate. Maybe my ideas aren’t always complete, and maybe sometimes my thinking is downright wrongheaded (as my Friendsgiving friend gently explained), but they are intended to be sparks, little flashes that light conversations. And hopefully those conversations continue at work, at the grocery store, around the holiday table. They get people talking about issues, sharing diverging viewpoints, debating, discussing. It becomes a conversation between neighbors, community members, people who don’t see eye-to-eye but otherwise believe the person they’re talking to is reasonable, smart, engaged.

People call us the Conway Daily Firestarter. They say it for all the wood stoves we fill. Yes, that may be true. But those aren’t our only sparks.

And again, as always, thank you for reading.

This column ran in today’s Conway Daily Sun.

Love and Thanks

messages-image1395101098 I read a short story the other day, and in it the author did all the things I admire. Her writing was playful, light, a drift of thrushes flitting about a thicket. I was deeply taken with her.

My writing, by contrast, is more goose-like: heavy, waddling from here to there. Sometimes it flies, but it only takes flight through powerful strokes. And once airborne it soars; the light dance is not for me.

I wish it were. There is a pixie-ness in erratic movement, a detachment from worry and the future. My writing is too serious, too focused on getting a point across. Responsibility for understanding sits with me, the writer, rather than on you, the reader, and therefore every sentence is planned, deliberate.

But for a book on love that technique will never work. There words can’t fall like stones too heavy to lift again. I’d be lighting a tea candle with a flamethrower. Love deserves better treatment than that. It deserves starlings and pigeons, packs that move in unison though they have nowhere to go. That’s love. Or a version.

I know a girl who holds her heart like a grasshopper tucked in cupped hands and covered. She wants it to leap, but everywhere are frogs waiting so she keeps her hands closed.

Another woman’s beauty is her curse. She’s not sure if it’s her that men love or her container. They profess everything but whenever she speaks they go blank. Her words become an echo. Her physical beauty is only a reflection, that a woman so stunning will accept them is to say they are enough. It is the acceptance they care about. She is lost to them.

I married the same thing once, only it was smart that mattered rather than pretty. She was pretty, mind you, but it was the quick-talking brain I fell in love with. That is to say, if she was that smart and loved me then maybe I was that smart too. I couldn’t tell—I’d never been very good at looking at myself. But with her as my rearview I stared quite contentedly. It didn’t last long.

What is love? Is it a joke? A tease? Because it never seems to go as we’d like. I have an answer, one that leans on trademark and is likely deeply unsatisfying for many. But it was shown to me, so I must tell.

Love is the Force, the Matrix. It is everywhere. It binds the world together. It flows into people and pets and chairs. It moves inanimate objects and pulls apart windmills. It’s a fingerprint from god, and it’s on you.

I wish I could explain it more precisely, but there it is. Love is a hummingbird, not a goose. The goose we can predict. It takes to the sky in great heart-shaped flocks and soars south to north with seasonal efficiency. But love isn’t like that. Love is Canada, where the geese land, and the rain that slows their way. It is the hunter looking to fell them. It is the marshes where they take refuge. It is the bullet and the reed. It is all those things. But we keep looking for the goose alone.

If I love you I don’t care who you are. I look at you and I know. I look at you and see brilliance. I see you for who you are and love that thing. I love it unceasingly, without reciprocation. Love is in the viewing, the standing next to, the breathing in. It is in your scent, the brush of your eyelash, the movement of your throat as you swallow. I love madly because I must love. It has nothing to do with being loved back. Those two are not connected.

Love honors, but it does not keep. How hard to remember! But I do not honor your walk by demanding it parallel mine. I honor your walk by watching you take it, by being blown away by each stumbling step, by admiring your courage those times your heart calls you to walk alone and you heed it, cast me to dust. That tearing sound? It is me. Your walk may leave me bloody, but it amazes me just the same. Love cannot kill me because it is me. It never leaves. It flows in and out of things. Sometimes it flows into you and out of me. A river in springtime, sometimes swelled with snowmelt and rain, a river in fall, sometimes lean and rocky. All versions of love are as equal.

So where does my love live? Where can it reside if not in you, with you? Nowhere. Everywhere. In me. Because you are fleeting, and if I love you I want you to be. I want your transformation to end, for the you that is to be you always. But you are the hummingbird. Your dance I cannot understand. Your shimmer changes with every twitch. I can only watch. I can only follow you with my eyes, my hands, my body. You might linger for a time, but I can not pour myself into you. Such acts are temporary.

So where does my love live? It lives in me. It is me. It is my body and being. It is my every heartbeat and breath. That is where my love lives. I boil with it, and it overflows me. I see you and recognize another such creation, perfect and wild. But I cannot give you anything. I can only hold that love myself, let the wonder of you live in my eyes. I know that love boils in you too, that the grasshopper you carry is a feint, a distracting jellybean. Your love is not for you to give away; it radiates like a second sun. It gives no greater light for my proximity. Find a place to entrust your heart inside of you and let it power the shining. Your heart is everything—the goose and the hunter.

And what of the fear that they are here because of the container? I suffer that fear myself, but only when I am in search of a container too, when my motives are shallow too. My covered eyes allow the world to fool me. Because what is a container? If you love, you offer the world you. That is the gift. Your container is destined to die. I may love the look of you, but look with an eye for beauty and everyone is beautiful. Smart, funny, pretty, kind, everyone has pieces. The other day I drew a woman who had the most stunning lips. I wanted to kiss them, but that’s not what she was there for. All the beauty of the world sat right there beneath her nose: full, red, alive. The rest of her form, what does it matter? Where are your lips?

I can’t fully explain. Either you get this or you don’t. But if you don’t, please come back to me. Reread, looking for pigeons rather than eagles. Majesty cures for a while, but humility allows a glimpse of the world around us. I am not wise, I can barely explain. But the river in springtime flood can carry us away without explanation. Love is like that. Don’t worry about the words themselves. Trust the feeling. Wade in. Worry about nothing. Worry about not drowning. That would be scary.

From the Backseat: Hipster Hunting

Hipster hunting doesn’t mean what you think it means.

I’ve been doing it for about a year. And no, the quarry doesn’t wear flannel or a beard (although if it did, Portland would be rich game grounds). Hipster hunting is hunting as a return to the past, as a return to authenticity, an homage to killing. It’s hunting to personally experience what goes into every meal containing meat.

Because, let’s face it, killing is something we’ve forgotten how to do.

Not as a society — as a people we’re quite adept at killing chickens, cows, pigs, the planet, whatever — but as individuals we’re bad at it. It’s one of many things we’ve outsourced. When was the last time you wrung a bird’s neck? Or smashed a fish over the head with a wooden baton? Sounds brutal, right? A bit barbaric? But here’s the thing: Chicken is GOOD. Fish is GOOD. Who would want to live without fish tacos? Almost every time I order a meal out, I get chicken, fish, lamb, a burger, something made of flesh. So really each time I go out I’m killing a chicken, a sheep, a cow. I mean sure, I’m not the one chopping off its head — that work goes to someone else — but my hunger is the architect of death. I’m basically the chicken Gestapo.

Last night I ordered a burger with bacon on top — not just cow, but a pig on a cow. I killed them, both in one meal. Devastation.

Earlier in the day I grabbed a pair of Otto’s pizza slices, one with bacon, the other turkey. Two more beasts — BAM! — gone.

Some days my fork is set to full auto.

Now I want to be clear: I have no problem with meat. We’re built to eat it, and animals taste awesome. I want cows and chickens and pigs to live happy lives, but I don’t think it’s wrong to eat them.

But we have grown pretty far removed from our food. Some people plant gardens as a reminder of where their carrots come from, but I’ve never been good at half-measures: I signed up to take my proper place in the killing fields—I took a hunter safety course.

But like most half-baked hipster ideas, it’s just not that easy. I’ve been stumbling around the woods for weeks draped in blaze orange and dragging a 12-gauge, but I have yet to experience the primal mix of elation and guilt I imagine accompanies killing.

Hunting is HARD. It may seem like an unfair game — sweet woodland creatures up against a man with a loaded gun — but when the person hunting has no idea what he’s doing the woodland creatures do just fine. I’ve been out a dozen times, and I haven’t shot a thing. I haven’t even swung my gun to my shoulder. The only thing I’ve shot is a paper plate, and if it were moving I’d bet money I’d miss.

I’ve seen game in the woods, but they are a lot faster than I am, a lot stealthier and probably a lot smarter. My best look is their backsides before they disappear into the underbrush.

On a recent trip I got so lost I had to use a compass to find my way back to my car. I followed a course east to the river and then hopped boulders upstream until I came to a bridge. I was tired, thirsty and overheated by the time I got back to my car, and over my two-plus-hour adventure I saw one bird. I didn’t get more than a snap look at him. Trying to follow him I nearly fell in a river. If it weren’t for Hannaford’s rotisserie oven I’d be poultry-starved.

So hipster hunting is thus far not a resounding success. All my meat still comes ordered off a menu. I’ve found new respect for those who can actually go out and harvest something for the table, but my personal ethical escapade has been fruitless.

Killing. It’s grisly business to be sure, but so far my tally is zero. Maybe I’ll have better luck next week.

CDS Column: Lost Hiker

I don’t hike much anymore.

I used to. I used to hike all the time. Through high school it’s all I wanted to do. When I graduated I wasn’t ready for college, so instead I went hiking — first on a cross-country road trip to hike Colorado, the Grand Canyon and Jackson Hole, then on the Appalachian Trail. At 18, I walked from Georgia to Maine. It took four months and transformed me from relative backcountry novice to old hand. Night after night, firing up a tiny backpacking stove, filtering water, sleeping among the pines, hiking became my first full-time job.

From there I moved to mountains, to rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering and skiing, added tools to get me to the top, techniques to push adventures to new heights. “Hiking” became something I did to get to the fun part: the snow, the rock, the vertical parts where the rope came out. I hiked on 14ers in Colorado (the state’s highest peaks), volcanos in Washington and the knife-like ridges of the Tetons, to rock faces in the Shawangunks in New York and Yosemite Valley in California, but keep in mind none of it was hiking.

And over time it moved even further aside. It got renamed “the approach” as I traveled to South America, Europe and Africa for mountains, rock and ice climbs. “Hiking” meant carrying a rope, harness, helmet and all the climbing gear for the adventure ahead, and thus weighted it became more work than fun. The sport once again found itself on my periphery.

But recently I’ve found myself back in the woods. I find myself there with no summit in sight, tramping between trees and ducking under spruce bows, the trail unbeaten and unmarked. I’m out there wandering, splashing through creeks and past logs downed by beavers. It feels like a return, a recovery of my hiking spirit.

But it’s not. It’s from before my high school days, before hiking boots and Gore-Tex and double-walled tents. It’s from my very first explorations of the woods, back in late elementary and middle school when I would pull on duck boots, grab the dog and vanish into the trees out past the cemetery at the end of the street. There were trails, but they were serpentine and poorly marked. The spruce and pine hung close, and though it was only a few hundred acres hemmed in by road on one side and ocean on the other, it was enough to get lost in. There were rotting logs and moss-covered rocks to climb over, and a canopy so thick sunlight struggled to reach the forest floor. It was just woods, more rugged than any hiking trail. My Australian shepherd Cody and I would walk for hours, wandering deer-paths looking for stray antlers and animal signs, imagining ourselves intrepid explorers, Native Americans maybe.

But that’s where hiking began for me, those first forays into woods as pretend hunters and explorers. The nylon windshirts, LED headlamps and ultralight stoves came later, the slick well-marketed modern trappings that now adorn that early call.

My earliest role models weren’t looking to stand on top of things. “Because it’s there” is a modern concept. They were looking to survive, to find enough to eat or the safest/quickest route. “Adventure” was an accident borne of necessity. Hiking wasn’t the approach to those explorers, it was the pre-industrial equivalent to a trip to the grocery store. It wasn’t sport, it was just part of life.

What brought me back to my roots? To the root of my roots? My new hiking partner—not an Australian shepherd, but a 30-year-old Sears and Roebuck 12-gauge.

That’s right, hunting is my new hiking. With my dad’s old shotgun I wander, no vertical objective calling from the horizon. I find myself stumbling through undergrowth, pushing aside tree branches, mucking across marshes and otherwise tramping, the original forest call. I’m not ticking off another peakbagging summit or trying to break my speed record up Washington; I’m just walking, wandering the woods, looking for antlers and animal sign.

And with the walking the wonder returned. The things I used to love about hiking — noticing the feathers scattered among the tree roots marking some kill, walking an old logging road in the cold morning air that eventually peters into nothing, tripping on the rusted hulk of an old peavey left by some long forgotten logger — now lives in blaze orange. It’s exploration with a walking stick of wood and steel.

And just like those early walks with Cody, when I go hunting I have no idea what I’m doing. I get lost. I get wet. I find myself tired and hungry and running low on water. I overdress or underdress, wear the wrong socks or wrong hat. It’s all those things I used to struggle through while hiking, but when there are summits involved I’ve long since learned my lessons. Not in hunting though. In hunting I’m still the utter beginner, more akin to that elementary school kid than ever.

As a result the animals of the forest are safe. I see game, but everything in the woods moves so much faster than me. I have yet to get my gun to my shoulder much less get a shot off before my quarry disappears. It’ll be a long time before I kill anything. When I see something I wind up chasing, but the animals know the hiding spots better than I do. So I search, walk in circles sometimes for hours.

It’s the most hiking I’ve done in years.

This column appeared in today’s Conway Daily Sun.

From the Backseat: Fear, the Biggest Liar

I will not be afraid.

Fear is a mask without holes to see through. It pulls at us, weighs us down. It is a yoke, a liar. I will not be afraid.

I will, however, say thank you to the women in my life: my sister Liz, my mom Nell, my nieces Charlie, Kennedy and Mackenzie. My sister-in-law. My step-mother. My cousin Lisa. My friends Helga, Lindsay, Terry, Nicole, Ana, and others too many to list and too strong to hold down. You are breathtaking. Powerful. Worthy. Equal. Unique. Amazing. I can only imagine your thoughts, the frustrations spinning inside. There is nothing I can say or do, but I hear you, grieve with you. Not for a missed political opportunity, but for the national sidestep around your inherent equality, our collective rejection of your internal capacity. For the continued elevation of your bodies as objects. For the grinding lack of respect you endure.

And to my friends of color — Jahad, Cynthia, Sinclair, Ish, Katie, Miguel, Helga, Lisa — my Muslim friends — Wasim, Farah, Selma — I can only imagine this moment for you, the feelings of exclusion, of otherness. You are the blood and bones of America. Your Haitian heritage, Salvadoran past and Saudi roots add texture to our fabric, your Friday prayers as sacred as Sunday. Worth does not live in color, sex or religion. It just is. Do not dim your light for anything, for anyone — doing so robs both you and the world.

Where to go from here? Part of me wants to drop the anger, to push for healing and national unity. But another part realizes this is a false choice, that the repudiation of Clinton and Obama grew out of racism and misogyny. Anger at the extreme right, meanwhile, is a rejection of these most American characteristics.

So how do we extract hate and exclusions from America? How do we instead spread ideals like tolerance, inclusivity and religious liberty? By yelling at opponents? No. We have to try something else.

Hurt people hurt people, a friend told me. Hurt people lash out. They react. They do damage. America today is full of hurt people. Will we, the tolerant, now become hurt too? Will this rejection grow to anger?

No. I will not be afraid. Fear is what got us here. I am sad, disheartened, but I will not move forward in anger. America has had enough of that.

Instead, I will look for the bright spots. Like Pious Ali, who was elected to Portland’s City Council. The first African-born Muslim to hold the office, he is a resounding voice for America’s integrated future. I heard Ali speak in September on young immigrants and people of color in America. His message was clear: We are stronger together. The gaps that divide us are narrow. The success of our newest citizens mark success for us all. Ali is not a man of fear. His eyes are open. He sees the American challenge with clarity, and instead of cowering in its shadow he smiles at it. He brings an unfettered heart to the fight. We must do the same.

The forces of inclusivity are strong, woven deep within the American experiment. We, the tolerant, are not alone. Fear and exclusionary violence will erupt from time to time, but those blows cannot overcome America’s inevitable grind towards equality. Over the long arc we are moving forward, and that movement continues, however awkwardly.

But our fight will always be hamstrung. We are cursed with the knowledge our opponents are as human as we are, as worthy and valuable as ourselves. We cannot demonize; even those who see us as abhorrent are our brothers.

How do we rise from such handicap? Like Ali: With clear eyes. By refusing to cower and rejecting the shadows. By realizing our commonalities will always be stronger than our rifts are deep. By engaging even our adversaries with curiosity and compassion. By refusing to be afraid. Fear is a liar. Put down that mask.