Learning To Be What You Need

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Would you have wanted you (as you are now) in your life when you were a kid?

I know it’s not always wise to start off blogs with a question like this, especially not one that “buries the lead.” Normally I try to start off a bit more gently- a good anecdote that puts the topic in context, or generally coming at a deep topic sideways. In this case, though, I feel like any attempt to answer a loaded question like this can only be given in story form. Ultimately, it makes us check in on our own stories. Has time actually conferred wisdom and maturity? Did we become the mentors and guides we would have wanted?

I don’t know, but I hope so and I’m always trying. That’s where stories help- we use them to understand character and how we write our own every day.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exists, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” – Neil Gaiman
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A Story Worth Telling in a Way Worth Hearing

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Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona Multi: sed omnes illacrimabiles Urgentur, ignotique longa Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
(“Many heroes lived before Agamemnon, but they are all unmourned, and consigned to oblivion, because they had not their sacred bard.”)

– Horace

I first read that quote on a webpage of Latin mottos where it was offered as just the first statement- “Vixere fortes ante agamemnona”- to mean that heroism exists even if no one notices it. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, this is a perfect demonstration of the power of the pen. The quote itself extols the role of writers and poets in giving heroes immortality.

The metacontext of the quote is that when Horace wrote the passage in his Odes, he was simping for the original “sacred bard” Homer, author of the Iliad where Agamemnon’s story is recounted. Some translators have taken a little poetic license on this and interpret the passage (the way I first heard it) as “Brave men lived before Agamemon, but they died forgotten, for there were no poets before Homer.”

The meta-metacontext is that, if you read the Iliad at all, Agamemnon is pretty much an absolute knob, a coward, a monster, and absolutely responsible for all of his own failures including and especially his own death. So millennia of writers and poets have been needed to burnish his story into anything remotely resembling a hero.

That’s what we in the creative business call “serious workshopping.”

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com
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Food and Drink- Keeping it Local

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Growing up in my wine enthusiast father’s house, I started learning about alcohol at 13. My sisters and I were passed small sips of whatever he and my mother were drinking, gently quizzed on what we tasted and smelled as far as our early-teen brains could describe ”flavor notes,” and then given an instructive lecture on that particular wine, where it came from, what caused those flavors, and the idea of terroir– that you could taste the unique chemistry of the soil and climate in the products of it’s earth.

I can tell you now that, despite my father’s instruction, I never really fell in love with wine. Unless it’s especially unusual, I will always enjoy wine as “interesting fun grape juice.” Unless it’s terrible, then I just don’t finish.

My dad was not speaking into a void though. What he said DID land and plant a seed, although it grew to be more inclined to beer and liquor, which I can say I then cultivated with the hearty fertilizers of sociology, history, anthropology, and being really damned curious when faced with the unfamiliar-but-promising.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
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Cozy Snow Day Vibes

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I got myself a really nice writing chair for sitting at my desk some time ago. I also have some wonderful USB-powered hand warmers that look like little stuffed toasts I got from a friend. My older sister sent me a USB-powered mug with a warming function and a freaking app to set the temperature for keeping beverages warm, a timer for tea, and to control what color the little light glows when its on.

With Portland in the grip of the Artic Blast (which no one will be able to say without making me think of a minty gum flavor,) the internet has been down and the blogging software on my computer is picky about working without the internet.

My iPad is not, though- and my iPad is here next to me in my rocking chair with a Mexican blanket and a mug of deep, dark, local beer. I may return to my Super Professional Writing Space for some editing and tweaks, but for now? Hygge wins.

The floor is a mess and I am trapped. All is well.
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The Staff Of Life, Liquified

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“Beer was liquid bread. Bread was solid beer.”

– Tom Standage, “A History of the World in Six Glasses

Walking in is as different at every beer hall as it is the same. Different decor, different vibe to the place, different service… different menus to be sure. Behind it all is a shared sensory vocabulary, however, that make each reminiscent of the others.

The arrangement of tables in the hall, sometimes, so that there is a selection of intimate booths for those who want to drink alone or in very select company and long linked tables for boisterous get-togethers and ersatz parties among colleagues. The general geography- you can see the seats and you can see the bar (the style and texture of which again reflects the mood and vibe of the place.) There is a clear order of operations to be observed here. A ritual to be followed and walked as carefully and unconsciously (for the faithful) as the Stations of the Cross.

A selfie of the author wearing an olive green newsboy cap, green tweed vest, and white shirt raising a pint of dark beer.
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