This, I Believe..

I believe coffee tastes better in a ceramic mug with a story, paired with a bean with it's own story (of fallow field and seedling turned ready to harvest, plucked, selected and roasted with deep love and care). Bonus points, of course, if the mug was picked for you by a beloved friend or loved one. This deeply savored coffee ritual means a great deal to me. It is a vital part of my mental health routine and it feels fundamentally full of light. 

I believe that nature contains vibrant healing properties; that our very souls can lift and our stress can ease when our flesh comes into contact with dirt and leaves and bark and cold water from rivers, lakes and oceans. 

I believe that music has the power to heal and restore. That the right four chords on a Sunday morning are rhythmic liturgy and can reconnect your mind and body with stories and tones and words and corporeal movements that live deep in your skin and soul (and in your ancient cellular DNA). And when you let the songs seep into your bones, I believe it allows you to commune with your ancestors, to hear Their stories, and to feel the unbroken connection from their hearts and their world to yours.

I believe community, in and of itself, to be a sacred thing; whether this is a community of your fellow creative misfits, a tribe connected by shared culture or a loose aggregate of wild-eyed wanderers that feel like home. Because I also believe that we humans bear the image of our creator and that the universe longs to know itself, to see and be seen, to love and be loved. So I believe that when we gather, whatever our particular beliefs, stories, backgrounds; if goodness flows and people are held, heard, safe and loved, community is a sacred thing. 

And I believe, as Henri Nouwen wrote, that hospitality is the act of meeting people where they are, loving people for who they are, and affirming their dignity as deeply, ineffably loved. 

What do you believe?

Commandeer the Manosphere (Let's Talk, Fam!)

You're not a Lone Wolf. You're not an Alpha Dog. You're not a Warrior Stoic. You're not a solitary Viking marauder on some ancient quest. You're a man. Your back was built to carry your children (and the children in your community). Your heart was built to protect and hold space for the vulnerable and to show up for the people you love. Your hands were built to build and maintain the structures (both physical and emotional) that keep your loved ones and your community safe, protected, loved.

Come back to the pack, Brother. Come home. Come find reservoirs of strength, love and courage you never knew you had. Enough with this toxic alpha shift. Enough with blaming everyone else. Enough with being a victim of your own story. Enough with performative masculinity. Enough with equating manhood with violence, manipulation and power. Enough aggrieved entitlement. You have the gifts and the strength to rebuilt, redesign and radically create a beautiful life.

Time to Grow Up and Come Home.

Be a steward. Listen. Heal. Break destructive cycles, toxic patterns and generational curses. Embody the healthiest version of yourself. Go to therapy. Read, Improve. Apologize. Move your body. Forge new traditions to pass on to your children or your community. Dance. Lift heavy things. Laugh, Go to doctor's appointments. Let your tribe know you love them. Love them hard. Be open with your feelings and express them. Set better examples. Become the person you needed when you were a child. Be worthy of the unconditional love and trust your children, your family and your community have in you. 

That Familiar Human Surge Of Inspiration..

For all of the hell, darkness and isolation I endured as a child, growing up two blocks from the beach was certainly a highlight. Truth be told, it probably saved my life. 

I don't remember the first time I dipped my little toes into the Pacific, but I'm sure, even as a little tyke, I felt a surge of inspiration. Even to this day, as a man in the firm grip of middle age, that feeling has not left me. When I get my old, grumpy ass down to the beach, I kick off my shoes and plunge my bare feet into the frigid water and feel that familiar surge. 

If you're willing to head just a little further south down the California coast this time of year, you can experience this magical moment all while a super bloom of wild mustard and lupines and poppies creep down the hillsides above the beach, flooding the horizon with their starkly contrasting colors set against majestic sunsets unlike anywhere else in the world. No matter how much I lament the impossibility of living in Southern California, it is not hard to become mesmerized, overtaken by the awe-striking beauty dispersed along our coastlines. You can step outside here and smell the salty ocean, and more often than not, the smell of citrus wafting in the breeze as well. 

These days, inspired words don't come easily. It's not so much that I suffer from writer's block, but something more akin to a clanging mind; a soul distracted by the exhaustive stream of everyday minutiae and its often deleterious effects. Even in my darker days, I realize I am blessed in more ways than I ever could have imagined. Not just in my personal life - that's a given - but in the physical space of the locale I inhabit. I am surrounded by breathtaking beauty, but I often still don't know how to unearth the words I want to say; still unsure of, and grappling with, the lessons this gorgeous place can teach me. 

Perhaps, I only need call on the years of meditation practice; to remember to be still, to sit unrushed as the waves crash all around me and the sun illuminates the water across the distant horizon. 

Many days, I feel a kind of growing discomfort about the AIs and algorithms taking over the natural flow of life and creativity; out-thinking and out-writing us at every turn. No matter how soulless it may seem, the future is here, and it is a thought that is frequently difficult to dismiss. But then, when I take that deep breath, when I slow the clang and clatter down, I remember that no computer or app or technologically advanced creation can feel the rush of cold salt water on bare ankles, or gently touch petals basking in the warm sunlight.

AI can't do what you and I do - wrestle deep within our souls through the sacred work of making; the work of actually creating something out of the things we think and feel.

And so what do I do with all of this? Do I give in to the clang and scattershot of my mind's unease? Or do I take that deep breath, pay clear attention and remain distinctly, messily human? It seems like the better option most days, if I can muster it. To let the water run over my toes and trust, not only in everything I'm seeing and feeling, but also in the idea that the words will eventually come. 

Insisting On Reality.

I work a lot. I'm tempted to say something ridiculous like "All I do is work." Believe it or not, such a statement does not feel even remotely disingenuous, so I'm gonna say it: All I do is work. Well, I get weekends off. I get to go home at night. But during the day, throughout the week, it's just work. It gets busier and busier at my job with each passing year, as if the whole entire goal is to somehow gradually take away every little semblance of joy from me a little at a time. These moments have gone from fleeting to something akin to slowly running down the drain.

Now, here's the part where I should probably say, lest the gods strike me down, that I'm grateful to have a job. Not only that, but I have a job that some people find rather exciting and would probably give their left nipple to have themselves. I'm grateful for my job. The only thing that's worse than having a job is not having a job. 

On the weekends, I get to be Dad. Not play Dad, mind you, but BE Dad. That's pretty good. I get to be with the people I love and try to be present. But that doesn't leave much room for art, which, I'm sorry to say, is probably my reason for being on this planet at all. I get a little time to write on Sunday evenings. I'm pretty exhausted by then, but I sit down and meditate for twenty minutes, and some of the dreck that has accumulated in my head all week dissolves. Then, I go to my notebook. I'm trying to write a novel. I write a few more pages every time. It's all disjointed now, and the fragments that come out are often absurd. There's no bright, blazing, holy inner pathway guiding me through the act of narration. I always used to hope I would find something like that when I was younger. When I was half-baked and reading Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums" as a young idiot, the process of writing seemed magical. But as an adult with a job and a life, I'm here to bring that youthful dream of a notion crashing back to reality. You never get lifted up into some kind of ecstasy. There's no roaring pile of euphoria to leap into, no game winning home run high fives from your teammates after finishing a chapter. Nope. You have to just sit down and write; insisting on a reality, again and again. 

David Foster Wallace talked a great deal about that. About how art, and life, was about enduring tedium. He's probably right. So I keep chipping away in stolen moments, remembering the beauty in fragments, in syllabic bursts and clean sentences. Who knows if it'll amount to anything. I'll keep insisting, I guess. The alternative, just letting my entire life be work and brief blank periods away from work, makes me want to leap head-first into a wood chipper. 

Sometimes, I think I write to remember the days before work took up my entire life; to just sit in that elusive fading joy for a little bit of time. Like pushing back the grey clouds of autumn and getting one more day of childhood blue sky summer, one more day of riding BMX bikes and playing on the ball field until the streetlights came on. 

I'm still coming out of the trance of childhood. But when I put pen to paper, though I see those memories in flashes, there are towering ruins almost everywhere. I see the crumbling alleyways of my youth in there, too, but the vision mostly feels like the decaying facade of an ancient, vanished world. I can feel those fleeting childhood images, longing to be the backdrop of the words I'm trying to craft. Begging not to be forgotten. Maybe that's my version of the bright pathway. It's not the mystical Kerouacian guide I anticipated, but it's something, and it certainly beats the wood chipper. So I keep on writing, insisting on a reality, again and again. What else is there to do? 

----

If you ever dig what I write, or find it adds some kind of value to your life, feel free to buy me a coffee at: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/dugganwrites

Even Walls Fall Down..

The Nazis spent the modern equivalent of $200 billion dollars building the Atlantic Wall over a period of two years. Built by slave labor, manned by hundreds of thousands of German soldiers, and commanded by the Irwin Rommel, the Wall was one of the largest defensive structures of all time, considered by Hitler to be utterly impregnable.

The Allies shattered it within a matter of hours. 

Just a fun fact to think about. 

It Gets Better, but we have to Be better..

Some years ago, I checked myself into a local facility for outpatient mental health treatment. Following that, I spent some time undergoing extremely intensive trauma therapy and other mental health procedures. I was relatively open about that entire experience with my family, but was way too ashamed to make much mention of it to my friends, co-workers, employer, recovery community, etc. Even then, despite my own difficulty navigating some of the shame I felt, I wanted nothing more than to help normalize treatment, especially for those struggling with PTSD and other trauma from childhood sexual abuse. I also wanted to help some of my friends and loved ones who were struggling from combat PTSD after returning from the horrors of war. 

Years later, I am glad we've begun to reach a point where people normalize opening up about their childhood sexual trauma and are encouraged to get help for it. It is a better world when we are compassionate. I'm so thrilled to see that veterans getting treatment for PTSD is acceptable and encouraged. We see it in war movies, it's talked about at the Super Bowl, and generally most people will just nod sympathetically and talk about how brave it is to get help in almost any situation. I wish I had that kind of support system when I was deconstructing and getting help, but I am just glad it is in place for most folks now.

Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of stigma attached to it, but not nearly as much as there used to be. That being said, scrolling the internet or having conversations with people around the topic of mental health shows me that there is still plenty of work to do. We *must* destigmatize *all* mental illness in a similar fashion. 

Amanda Bynes didn't choose to have a mental illness anymore than I did. My struggles aren't magically more heroic or noble than hers. I cannot imagine my seeking and receiving treatment being reported by major news outlets across the country and thousands weighing in on it with shitty, cruel, comedic takes. If you mock her or laugh at her, just understand that you're laughing at and mocking every single person who has ever had to deal with the life-changing symptoms of mental illness. From a combat vet in your family to a friend who has suffered horrific childhood sexual abuse, to any and all in between.

The fact that we still view someone's mental health crisis as a spectacle, as some kind of  circus for our personal amusement, is evidence of a very deep cultural rot that continues to permeate the ongoing dialogue about mental health in this country. The cancerous core of that rot is our outright refusal to view other human beings as other actual, living, breathing human beings. Walk a mile in the shoes of the afflicted, and see if a few hits of dopamine as you endlessly scroll social media is worth it. Be better. 

And if you're struggling, don't listen to the voices in your head or the voices of the cruel and cynical degenerates. You matter, you are worthy of love and you Can Heal. I promise.

I Came In From The Wilderness, A Creature Void Of Form..

Grief. It's a series of shuddersome stitches that hold your torso together. Most often, they are slipshod and clumsy; starting just under your chin and winding their way south down to the top of your pelvis. These markers are not easily camouflaged. You see them naked in the mirror every morning, feel them when the first hint of a heavy storm is approaching and, in my case, whenever you hear Side One of "Blood On The Tracks."