233/365

wine and cheese
a few cocktails.
soft music:
the decemberists
and phoebe bridgers.
close friends
sharing first time
told stories-
the car crash in mexico,
the possum in the fridge,
and veetus the one-legged
russian neighbour being sprayed
by the hose as the couch goes up
in flames at mary lane.
it’s a miracle anyone cares
enough about anyone to listen
to their stories.

210/365

two all nighters
learning about brave spaces
diversity, equity and inclusion
have left me disoriented
and cotton headed.

spent time with friends
on their deck
eating cheese and cake,
drinking wine
and complaining about
the pandemic and
feeling hopeful about
the future.

these days
aren’t miraculous,
fun or even memorable,
but we share cooking tips
and how we spend our hours.
they are the lives
we’re forced to live and that’s
all we can really do.

44/365

cycled to the
neighbourhood italian place
to share a bottle of wine
with friends,
while nursing a headache.

chit chatter
and lemonchello,
a cool
breeze
the perfect companion
home.

how many moments
of joy must we collect,
before we call off the search
and confess to a lifetime
of happiness?

middle aged
contentment and equanimity
have seldom been
the muse for worthwhile poems.

but they keep falling into my lap
and all i can do is gather them
in my pocket,
until the day i might need
things as simple as:

wine.
breezes.
bikes.  
placid platitudes
and peace. 

37/365

cinnimon shampoo bar
mixed berry soap
pineapple facial cleanse
manly musky cologne

i’m writing
this poem
in a cool shower
as the sun sets
after a few hours
in the sun
by the pool

earlier:
i put together
a shelf
washed the fruit
fell into a nap
clocked some pages
plucked the strings

and tonight?
a bottle of pinot
maybe a few gin and tonics—
friends
games
laughter.

another night in the
procession of privilege
i pretend to have earned.

youth can never predict
the banality and beauty
of days like this.

always expecting so much more,
i wish i would have known
that simple joy
isn’t so hard to achieve
if you stopping running
so hard
in so many
different directions.

Another

It’s 12:12 am. Tom Joad by Bruce Springsteen is on my head phones. Not sure where that call came from.


“Welcome to the new world order. The highway is alive tonight and nobody is kidding anyone of where it’s going.”


Another old white racist is now the attorney general of the United States. The nightmare gets worse and more real with every passing day. No can believe what is happening, but America is headed into a dark tunnel and the disappearing speck of light is getting smaller and farther away. “If there is someone struggling to be free, look in their eyes ma and you’ll see me.”


We put up the Christmas tree tonight. The girls were excited. Kaia made warm milk with cinnamon as we laid on couch watching a Friday night movie. Headed to Lee and Cindy’s for a well deserved bottle of wine.


Today I taught kids that we are all Africans as we discussed evolution and the human family. It felt a dollar short and an hour too late, but it is in the curriculum so it might make the world a better place. I talked to a bully and told him to be nicer. I asked a victim to speak up.


I am back at work tomorrow for professional development on a Saturday, then again on Sunday.


My head is down and I'm working toward the December break. I can feel the ocean swallowing me as the sun caresses my darkening skin. Sand and slow hours. Afternoon cocktails and late afternoon naps. Another month. Another year. Another and another and then one more other.

Crimson Sleep

The haze is back and when you first get up in the morning it feels pretty shitty. The achy joints, the groggy head, the tearing yourself away from a world of dreams to one based in reality is always a tough sell, but today was a good one.


Watched the girls learn to hustle and get their game faces on as they scrimmaged a frustrated boys team to an 18-18 tie. Kaia was a ball-stealing, rebounding machine. So great to watch her gain confidence as she dribbles and shoots and passes on the court. I really hope this is something she sticks with through at least middle school.


A quick lunch and then a few errands from home, one being a purge of old clothes to The Salvation Army and putting together a book trolley for Kaia’s room, which involved an hour long trip to Ikea to get a replacement broken screw. Don’t ask.


Then a pleasant Sunday evening BBQ with friends. We chatted, grilled and ate while the kids played among themselves.


That was it. It was a simple day the way days are meant to be simple. Not much to think about, nowhere for thoughts to really dwell. Now it is nearly eight, though it feels much later. No work to do tonight and the lights are low, the music is soft and the wine tastes like a glass of crimson sleep. Tonight feels like the sigh before a big week, but I am ready and excited.

Bigger Pieces of You

One of my favorite toys as a kid was my dad’s wine opener. It was one of the ones that has two long arms that rise as you twist the cork; I used to pretend it was a scrawny metal robot doing jumping jacks. I used to grab it from the table on Saturday mornings from the rest of the debris as my parents slept upstairs. The smell of stale smoke and wine fumes in the air. Glasses laced with ruby rings and overflowing ash trays. The stereo was still on and a Neil Young record sat gathering dust. The low grade buzz silenced as I turned it off and sleeved the vinyl to make sure it was safe.


I would lay on my stomach and use the wine opener to attack Luke as if it was a droid from Tatoonine. Until of course Han Solo would come and save Luke yet again and defeat the wine-opener droid.


My childhood was lonely but happy. Filled with hours of solitary play. I don’t ever remember anyone actually actively playing with me. I often entertained myself on the periphery of political debates, long hours in the darkroom and empty Saturday mornings.

…

I took some kids from my Mentor class to dinner and laser tag tonight. Not everyone could make it, and it was the smallest group I have taken out to date, but they had a blast. It was a good reminder that all connections and teaching need not always be for every kid all the time. You spot teach and connect with those who need it when you can. This random group of six kids tonight, would not have been out together if it wasn’t for our outing. And a few of them probably would not have been out at all. We ate, We chatted. We shot each other with lasers and then we went our separate ways.


If you want to build community and connect to kids they need to trust you and they will never trust you if they only see you in teacher mode. They need bigger pieces of you. Some people might not agree or not have the time, but the truth is that the student teacher relationship is a human one, and as humans we need to let down our guard and relinquish the authority teacher student dichotomy. You want a kid to trust you, they need to know you. I know that an few hours eating Nando’s and running around in the dark is not enough for this kind of connection but it is a step in the right direction.

…

“Wow I didn’t know guitars could sound like that.” Kaia listening to the solo at the end of Seven Nation Army on the way to McRitche today. She has been obsessed with the song since she saw a middle school mad play it at Sound Asylum.


I was so proud of my girls for hiking the trail with zero complaints. Kaia even had blisters and she sucked it up. They were wet and muddy and hot and sweaty and all into the creeks and trails and having fun in the jungle.


Kids need so much more time in nature than we give them. Living in a city and following an intense structured international school system, our kids need dedicated consistent time running and playing in the mud. Free to get dirty and make mistakes and take risks.

…

I closed my eyes and thought of a memory:


I was living in Mission Beach with Jeff in a one bedroom place that housed his motorbike in the living room. I can’t recall how long we lived there or where I slept. Did I have a room? A bed? That detail feels unimportant. I do remember flooding the floor one night. Riding his bicycle to Caroline’s house for a keg- me on the handle bars screaming and waving away the people. I remember cockroaches and the darkness, but somehow seldom the ocean. Why did I not learn to surf in those days or ever swim in the wave? I worked at a series of shitty jobs and called you on the payphone from across the street because I was lonely and only your voice seemed to make it all go away.

The Voice

Sometimes, more often than not actually, I think that maybe after eight-and-a-half years of sobriety, I might be able to throw in the towel on the teetotaling, and enjoy a nice robust Chardonnay with the rest of the civilized people of the world when I go out to eat dinner on a river in the fading glow of a well-spent day. Or maybe, I too can "grab a cold one," with the other parents as we watch our kids frolic and swim in the pool with the pregnant South East Asian clouds simmer overhead threatening rain.

But then I think about what I just did to that bag of Salted Kettle Potato Chips, And I think again. 

image by appleswitch

I'm laying in bed, my fingers covered in grease, half the bag gone before I take my first breath. I hear that all familiar voice over the tender crunching of chips, "Man these are good. Can we eat them faster? There is no point in stopping now, there are not enough left for a satisfying session next time. You are more than half way done. Just finish the bottl...bag."

Addiction is about that voice. The one that pretends to be you, but really is only manipulating you to do the things you know you shouldn't. It's a familiar voice no doubt, one I hear every time I over indulge on anything: chips, batch of cookies, a vegan chocolate bar. I have never been able to moderate or negotiate with that voice. It's all or nothing.

As my vices dwindle with age, I am left wondering why I have to abstain entirely from the things I want. How do normal people just have a few chips? Or one or two glasses of wine, without the need to inhale, annihilate, devour, and.....see, just talking about it gets me excited. 

Perhaps my problem is that I know the voice too well. We have been through so much. He has saved me from many a painful realization, all the while making dousing me with shame and regret. Food for me, as of now, is harmless, so I will quell the voice with a bag of chips now and then, but I am still distrustful with the glass of wine on the river.

Sometimes at a party, while getting my wife a glass of wine I will discretely smell the aroma wafting from the glass. Fruity and light, the glass lightly moistened with condensation. It smells like a tart fresh apple with a hint of pear and, is that..... yes some pineapple sweetness. That is when I hear the voice, "You could drink that entire bottle in one sip like a cool Snapple and just be getting started." 

I hand the glass to my wife and reach for a cold glass of water and think about later in the night when I will binge on a bag of chips. Keeping the voice satiated once again.