Each movement of every step, the seconds adding up to minutes and days, takes you closer to a finite end. In spite of all we want to believe, or all we put off, we are slowly making our way towards a certain death.

I can’t sugar coat it. I’m neither a pessimist nor an optimist, but a realist. We are all dying; it is a natural part of our evolution, the last step of life’s cycle.

Many of us are, or may be, fortunate to walk through our time steering clear of the multitude of diseases that accelerate the process. A greater number of us will be blessed with a cure for ailments unknown, or will be healed. Some of us won’t be as lucky. I, at this age, count myself in the first group, though things can change; things always do.

All of us are dying. From the moment the cord is cut, it is part of the process. We grow up and grow old. As the years pass, our skin will fade, hair will thin and take on a silver tone, bones become brittle, eyes grow weak, and gravity just happens. We see it, most noticeably, as the ageing process is personified by our parents. We watch, we listen, as they do, and as they do, so do we. We don’t notice it to the same effect until they are gone, as they pass on through old age or otherwise.

And we keep stepping forward.

The death of a parent forces a closer look at what you are doing in your own life, and how you are living. You think a little deeper of changes, physical and spiritual, you have made or are making. You question choice and chance.

How we choose to move forward makes up the difference between a life lived, and a life well-lived. Caution rarely seems to work, for in doing so you miss out on what this life affords. At the same time, reckless behavior — tipping the temptations that cross your path — will surely hasten the pace. Some things are simply too good to miss, and some things are mistakes.

It’s finding a balance, making decisions on how to live, without becoming obsessed or depressed with the end result.

Death is neither a possibility nor a probability, but an eventuality. You can decide to face it head on, or choose to ignore it by trying to squeeze as much life and experience out of your years. Still you need to be cognizant of where you’ll end up. Ignore is the root word of ignorance, and I will no longer be ignorant. I’m well past the Peter Pan stage (I was a lost boy far too long) and would like to think my decision to live is a somewhat serious concern.

It’s deciding how my body and mind, and thus my soul, are to be nurtured. I still carry a manageable share of vices, can occasionally be led into temptation, but I’m trying to create that equilibrium between what will prolong, and what will kill. I’m hardly middle-of-the-road, but I am more careful how and where I spend my time, and with whom I spend it. It’s how we decide to live now that has the greatest ramification on how we die.

I am attempting to find value in all that is around me, and weed out things with less worth. Simplicity is attractive, but getting there is rather complicated. I suppose patience has a lot to do with it. I’m more patient now than I was when I was younger.

I’m past the point of wanting things, but hold a desire for what I need in my life. Yet, I no longer think about it, as much. Time is wasted wanting things that may never occur. But to allow the desire to continue means accepting things the way they are right now, and leaving your mind open to what may be.

Desire surpasses want (on so many levels), but is less forceful and occurs naturally, much like death. Or like life. The things I want to do, the places and people I want to visit, become more significant when they are desires. They become the things worth living for.

I don’t know how much time I have left, yet I do know my time is precious, so I’m going to enjoy as it flows. I will do so patiently, naturally, with intent, appreciation and forethought.

I’ll continue dying to live, instead of living to die.

“When did the choices get so hard
With so much more at stake
Life gets mighty precious
When there’s less of it to waste”
                           – Bonnie Raitt

Morning crow, reliable soul, dutiful beyond reproach,
an eagerness to greet daylight before fully formed. Nothing,
if not enthusiastic.
You, solitary and without conscience,
never fail to usher in the day. A voice recognizable, its volume
ever-present but, as usual, without tune.

Undeterred, you provide each of us a lesson, or
each of us who hear you calling out, perhaps to brethren
who just yesterday settled on power lines as jurors,
mocking,
passing judgment on those below. 

Searching, as you do, within your realm, for a crust
of bread, or carcass of a roadside squirrel. Deservedly,
you should well feast on the flesh of lesser creatures,
those without speed, or sense, to deal with vehicular traffic.
Scavenger thus, 
you welcome scraps few others would accept.

So you sing of your presence, a persistent craw
craw   craw        craw
a noise unlike birdsong of a thrush or swallow, or any 
of those pretty birds. 
Your song is more utilitarian, less than rhythmic,
and to nature’s great voices
what a parking ticket may be to a poetry.

Still you go on and on, and on,
and on.
I hear you. I empathize with you,
I know you. 
For I too may not have the voice, or the content,
others may possess, still I try.
I too 
have something to say and I continue trying.
For that, I appreciate you.

But morning crow, please know it is Sunday.
Perhaps you may not be a Biblical bird,
as the regal Dove may be, but you should know,
if only by observation, this day is one of rest.
It was my wholehearted intention, 
if only allowed, to let sleep remain 
for another hour. Or two.

So crow,
morning crow, proud crow,
please allow me this time, just for today.
Return tomorrow 
when your song will be appreciated, 
even if not understood.

©2014 j.g. lewis

I have five favorite words. Individually, each is strong. Together, in any order, in any amount, they are powerful.

Inspiring.

Life-affirming.

peace
faith
hope
love
trust

Five words; words worth waiting for . . . or searching for, fighting for,
or hoping for.

For many years, the words had become a mantra of sorts, my mythos; so to speak. Not so much an incantation, but more of a statement, or laundry list, of words I believed in.

Then, it seemed, I didn’t.

A few years back, in frustration mainly with myself, the word hope lost its power. By circumstance or consequence, I lost my ability to communicate authentically. My words, my thoughts, my actions and aura, were not connecting, as they should have. I didn’t realize this until it was far too late.

I went numb. I settled into a pattern, and hope never once gave me a nudge. Without hope you are hopeless. I wasn’t. So, I removed the word hope from my vocabulary. It seemed like the right thing to do, at the time.

It came to me at the wrong time, but I realized there is nothing to hope. Hope it is a useless word. Unlike the other four words, hope has no substance. You can know peace, you can feel love, you learn and earn trust, and you can find faith. But all you can do is hope for hope, and that itself says something.

Hope keeps you wondering, hope keeps you waiting, and hope keeps you thinking. There is no resolution in the thoughts hope provokes. You just keep hoping, and that is wrong. Or it certainly isn’t right.

There is nothing tangible to hope. Hope is wishy-washy.

Hope does nothing but prolong pain, anger, or insecurity and fear. Hope, eventually, does little more than create doubt and disappointment. While hope comes from euphoric thoughts or feelings, there is nothing concrete to it.

If anything, hoping creates false hope, or it seems as if that is what true hope is: false. It tends to create unsubstantiated ideals for desiring what may be, when instead you should focus on what you have or what you want.

So I stopped hoping. I began planning.

I settled into a routine I believed would accomplish my goals and remove the sadness I had encountered, simply by staying busy with my plans. And, for a while, it seemed to work. I planned, and I followed through on my plans. They were concrete, they could be adjusted, or altered, or erased. Plans were made, plans were acted on, or plans were dropped. It seemed easier when I didn’t include hope.

Hope is a difficult word; it is tenuous, at best. It lacks definition. I, then, lacked definition. I was lost, and there was no hope. I could not even aspire to hope. You can want, but it is not hope. You can dream, no, you can wish, but that is not hope.

I had stopped hoping.

What I was doing, I thought, was a far cry from hope. But, as you go, as you grow — as I evolved — I then realized you couldn’t erase hope. No matter how I continued to deny myself, hope was always there. It may not always be bright and shiny, but it reaches out, or occasionally whispers from the shadows. Perhaps it is subconscious, but as you plan, as you accomplish even in small increments, there is this bit of hope that keeps you moving forward.

You just have to acknowledge it.

Not including hope in your life is like painting a rainbow without violet; the rainbow is not complete. Life is not complete without hope.

Hope, as a word, has returned to me. I have allowed it back into my vocabulary, and into my life, though I know it never left.

I don’t think you ever lose hope, which is not its nature. Hope keeps you believing, I think hope is what drags you through the grief, or giving-up stage, and keeps you looking further ahead. Hope is the root of all planning.

The thing is, the hope you seek must be self-contained. It’s a lovely thought to hold out hope for someone else, but you don’t really have that power. Hope is internal. In the face of tragedy or despair, I think the greatest hope is how you respond to the situation, and how you deal with the aftermath. Hope is always there, in the back of your mind, or at the core of your being.

It’s when I stopped hoping, that I stopped being.

It’s amazing how the written word has the power to stay with you.

We all have favorite quotes, or poems, lyrics, lines, and chunks of dialogue from stories we’ve read, which somehow become trapped in our psyche. We made a connection with the words or found value in the message; they cling to us, returning time and again.

In times of hardship, or heartbreak, the right words can cauterize a wound. Appropriate words can soothe the senses and prolong the pleasure of those moments of sheer joy or passion. The words are always there; the ones we rely on to appease our emotions and guide us through this thing we call life.

More than four decades ago, I read something that continues to come back to me. It wasn’t an epic piece of literature or classic prose, just an everyday magazine article. It was an article so well written that it has permanently changed the way I approach this one specific task.

In 1973 I broke my leg in a skiing accident and spent a few weeks recuperating at home, essentially sitting and reading, mostly in bed. My mom bought me paperbacks, and there were always newspapers around our house, and a family friend brought a couple of bags of magazines from her husband’s reception area. I read, cover-to-cover, Time, Newsweek, People and the New Yorker. I can’t totally recall the politics and personalities, but I am often reminded of an article that has always – subconsciously or consciously – had an impact on me.

The article (for the longest time I thought it was from Reader’s Digest) was titled ‘How To Eat an Ice Cream Cone’. Every time I take a lick, I remember the writer’s well-crafted instructions about the circular motions required, and the art of using your tongue to push the ice cream deeper into the cone as you progress. These practices have now become habit. I am always — always — circling the cone to prevent drips and dripping.

I write about this not because I had ice cream on the weekend, but last year I did one of those mindless Google searches we all occasionally do. I typed “How To Eat an Ice Cream Cone”. Lo and behold, I found the article, the actual article, I read all those years ago. It was not Reader’s Digest, but rather The New Yorker (a magazine traditionally dedicated to all things important). Even though I read it in the ‘70s, I still think of this article when I get one of those cravings.

Now I didn’t remember the “classic ice-cream-cone-eating stance” mentioned below (and surely now I have re-read the instructions I might well take up the posture) but so much of this article comes rushing back.

I’m not sure if I have read other pieces by L. Rust Hills (certainly none as memorable as this one), but you can tell he is a great writer; one of those writers who can take a topic, capture the scene and take you there.

Hills does more than educates and informs. A cautionary tale, the article concentrates less on the taste and texture of the flavorful delight and focuses on the nature of the product, the environmental effects on it, gravity, and the perils of incorrect consumption of both the ice cream and the cone.

I’m always in awe when a writer can take an everyday topic, or other times an operose task, and turn it into something both interesting and informative. The words sink into your memory and actually change how you act or alter your perception.

This is what all writers want to do, each time they write, using the same 26 letters everybody has access to and creating a piece that will be read and remembered. Hills succeeds, on so many levels, providing deft and dutiful instructions to a task everybody takes for granted (“Real pleasure lies, not simply in eating the cone, but in eating it right.”) You can taste the details.

All instructions, for anything, should be this complete. Can you imagine how much easier it would be to assemble a gas barbecue, or install a new laser printer, if the instructions were written better than they usually are?

I’ve attached a link to the article. Yes, at almost 1,000 words, it may appear lengthy, but as you read you may find that the time it takes to read is about the same time it takes to actually eat an ice cream. Real time. Real good.

Delicious.
“How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone”  *

 By L. Rust Hills
 
THE NEW YORKER, August 24, 1968




Grasp the cone with the right hand firmly but gently between thumb and at least one but not more than three fingers, two-thirds of the way up the cone. Then dart swiftly away to an open area, away from the jostling crowd at the stand. Now take up the classic ice-cream-cone-eating stance: feet from one to two feet apart, body bent forward from the waist at a twenty-five degree angle, right elbow well up, right forearm horizontal, at the same level as your collar-bone and about 
twelve inches from it.



But don’t start eating yet! . . .

 READ MORE: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1968/08/24/how-to-eat-an-ice-cream-cone

*Reprinted without permission, but with total respect.

Note: If the link doesn’t work for you, send me an email and I’ll gladly send you a copy.

We are all liars.
In that
we find truth.

I don’t like that statement: We are all liars.

It speaks to all that offends us, it ruffles our feathers, it confronts the widely-held belief where truth is a virtue held in the highest regard.

We believe ourselves to be truthful; in many ways we believe it is the strongest plank in our moral platform. We tell ourselves it is our goal, our destination, and our destiny.

Truth.

Truth; we listen for it, we search for it, and we live for it. Fuck, at times we believe it is all we know. Or all we want to know.

We don’t.

So we tell ourselves things to make us believe, we lie to ourselves to make us believe. We lie to others to make them believe, in us. Where we slept last night, how we performed at our workplace (or what we actually do), how we feel about something, how we enjoyed dinner at our best friend’s home – we don’t always answer those questions honestly.

We are liars. We don’t always tell the truth.

We tell untruths. Falsehoods.

Fibs.

Lies.

We might even classify it as a rationalization, a self-medicating myth we feed to ourselves to help us believe we are who we are, and what we are, or to make people believe we are better than we are; even better than them.

We lie to them. And worse, we lie to ourselves.

We say things — under pressure, out of guilt, perhaps in the throes of passion — that are simply not true, things we know will never happen, and still we say them.

We even say them truthfully.

We are all liars.
In that
we find our truth.

 ©2014 j.g. lewis

  “People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.”
                                                                                    – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Above illustration photographed off the wall of some Starbucks, somewhere in Toronto. The artist’s name was not on the sketch.   Please contact me if this is your artwork, so I can give credit where credit is due.           Much respect j.g.l.