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The first time we saw V she was hefting a dead sheep into the back of her Mercedes SUV. Maile and I, in England for less than a week, still felt jet-lagged and homesick.

I hadn’t figure out how to use the radiators – nights were cold, especially after the wood fires burned out. Our little cottage was mostly empty. And we were still sleeping on the floor. There’s nothing like sleeping on the floor to make you miss home and wonder what’s so great about adventures.

“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, persuading Maile to put on something warm and join me for a jaunt through the foreign countryside. We walked away from the main road and back our lane toward the gardener’s house. Yes, there was a gardener.

Just past the courtyard (where we would park a vehicle, if we ever got one) was a fence, and on the other side we saw a small lady in Wellington boots shuffling among the sheep. Her SUV was backed up into the pen, and she was in the process of lifting what looked like a giant sack of wool.

“Oomph,” she grunted. The back of the Merc dropped with the weight. Then she saw us. A smile the size of the Atlantic lit up her face. Her icy blue eyes sparkled.

“You must be Shawn and Maile,” she said in the most perfect British accent I had ever heard. We both sort of nodded.

“Oh dear,” she said, laughing at herself and throwing her work gloves into the SUV, on top of the dead sheep, “I am a mess!” She held out a small hand, which I shook, and it felt more alive than bare electrical wire. She immediately came in close for a kiss on both cheeks, which I must admit I hadn’t been expecting, but I think I played the part reasonably well. Maile, forewarned, executed a much better English greeting than I had.

“Look at you two. Are you getting any rest? Do you like the cottage? It’s frightful, isn’t it. We have some furniture that Stanley can bring down – have you met Stanley? He’s the groundskeeper, lives in the house at the end of your lane.”

We kept nodding. I didn’t want to talk, certain that my American accent would sound clumsy and oafish next to her silken threads of speech.

“Do you need a hand?” I asked, nodding toward the vehicle carrying the dead animal.

“No, thank you. We will dispose of it properly. Now, on to more important things. What are you doing tonight?”

“Tonight?” Maile asked. “Nothing. Why?”

“Then you must come to our house tonight, 8 o’clock. We’re having a dinner party.”

I wanted to refuse, just because I am mostly an interminable humbug and homebody, but we had no excuse. Not only were we not doing anything that night, we weren’t doing anything any night any time soon.

“Excellent, see you at eight,” she said, flashing one of those approving grins that made you feel like she was your best friend in the world, or your mother at her proudest moment.

We turned to continue our exploration, but she shouted at us before we had gone fifty yards down the lane.

“Do you have a car?”

“No!”

“We have an extra in the garage,” (she pronounced garage like gare-ahhh-j). “I’ll put the keys through your mail slot.”

We shrugged. There was no way I was driving one of her cars on the wrong side of the road.

“See you at eight!” she shouted.

(continued here: The Undressed Man)

Arriving in London that day was like waking up in a new world. We had taken the red eye from Newark, where the earth breathes smoke through its cement-covered skin. I had watched the sun set behind smokestacks and the outlines of factories and artificial clouds. When we woke up the next morning, the hum of the plane’s engines tried to put us back to sleep, and sunlight streamed through the windows. We struggled to wake up while flying over Ireland, and then Wales, the greenest pieces of land I had ever seen. They were like giant lime lollipops floating in a sea of blue raspberry kool-aid.

Ben and Shar picked us up from the airport. Soon we were leaving the city on a massive highway – west, and out of London, was an easy direction to go during morning rush-hour. The cars on the other side of the motorway, heading into the city, crept along. Then, without warning, we were off the highway and on to small country roads and roundabouts. We passed old, mostly brick, houses that seemed to grow in groves, like trees. Finally, roads even more narrow, where passing cars were forced to slow down and both slide over into their respective ditches just so that they could get by.

Maile and I were so tired. Everything felt like a dream.

Then a quick left into a at-one-time-invisible-suddenly-appearing driveway. The iron gate was wide open. A sign on one of the ancient trees said “Rocketer”. We didn’t know it at the time, but this was the name of the estate. In the US, nice houses have big addresses, like 20964 Merchant Mill Terrace, but in England they just have names like “Rocketer”.

A fork in the driveway, and we went off to the left, drove a few hundred yards, then parked in a small cobblestone courtyard surrounded by horse barns and storage sheds. If we bent down and looked through the trees, we could see the main stone house on the massive estate, gardens pouring down the hill in front of it. Three large German Shepherds snarled and played with each other in the distance, rolling over in the lush grass. A flock of sheep ate their lunch, nothing moving but their slowly rotating jaws.

Our new landlords lived in that house, but on that morning all was still. The large windows were empty. No one stirred.

“Here we are,” I told Maile. “Welcome to your new life.”

We walked toward our small cottage through one of those beautiful English, October days: windy, bright and green. The tall hedgerows made every road or path feel like a hallway in some never-ending house.

The lane was full of potholes. There was a small greenhouse just down the hill – escaping grape vines still held marble-sized pieces of fruit. We turned the corner around the small cottage, entered through a side door.

The kitchen was tiny. A year or so from then I would surprise Maile and replace the floor while she was back in the States. The bathroom was nothing more than a lean-to off the kitchen – the shower head was at the lower end, so we had to crouch to get under the weak flow of water. The fireplace in the living room warmed the radiators. The fireplace in the other room was so shallow that the fire seemed to be out in the room with you, yet the smoke was magically drawn up the narrow chimney.

Ben and Shar said good-bye. We walked upstairs. Suddenly feelings of adventure were replaced by feelings of insecurity and homesickness. We pulled one of our blankets from a suitcase and spread it out on the carpeted floor in one of the small, empty bedrooms. There were only a few pieces of furniture. We wrapped ourselves in the blanket, exhausted. Maile cried for a little bit, missing home, then fell asleep.

I looked out the window at the sky, thinking that, somehow, even the clouds looked different in England.

(continued here: A Dead Sheep, and a New Friend)

Only the extraordinary is valuable. It’s not worth doing something unless you are in the top .1%. The only interesting thing about you is how you are different from everyone else.

These are the lies that bounce around inside our brains and rob us of our creativity.

* * * * *

We fight to the death with anything that would render us “the same.” We want to be the one-off, the unique, the only of its kind. We want to be the one in a million on American Idol or the .8% of high school players that eventually get drafted into the NFL. We want to be the Nobel Prize winner or the President of the United States (wait – does anyone still actually want that job?).

We want to be great.

Is there anything wrong with wanting to be unique? The best? The most renowned in our field? Is there anything wrong with wanting to climb to the pinnacle and shout some primal scream out over the expanse?

Probably not. But we also want it now. Therein lies the problem, because often when our desire to be extraordinary is not achieved TODAY, then we quit. We give up. And in quitting, we lose the very thing it takes to reach the mountain top: stick-to-it-iveness, perseverance, and, most importantly, TIME.

* * * * *

I can only speak for writers. Actually, I can only speak for this writer.

But sometimes my desire to write as well as John Steinbeck can be paralyzing. Or my lack of publishable work at the age of 33, er, almost 34. Or the fact that most days just putting one…word…in front…of the other…is so…difficult.

Most days I don’t feel extraordinary and am confronted by the fact that I’m more likely to walk on Mars or grow eyeballs in the inside creases of my elbows than I am of ever winning the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize or, let’s be honest, publishing one more book.

This is when my obsession with being unique IS NOT GOOD. Because it makes me want to quit.

* * * * *

“Only writers, it seems, expect to achieve some level of mastery without practice.” Stein On Writing by Sol Stein

* * * * *

Some of my favorite novels of all time have been written by folks in their 60s and 70s: legends like Jose Saramago and Umberto Eco and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I think I will write a great novel when I am in my seventies. I’ve always thought I have an old soul, one more suited to melancholic reflection than heroic or spontaneous action. Perhaps, when I am in my 70s, I will be extraordinary.

But the only way that will happen is if I set aside my insistence on being marvelous today and become comfortable with who I am, the work I am producing today.

* * * * *

I’ve never climbed a mountain, but I can’t imagine you would get far if you constantly peered up at the summit. Most of the time you can’t see it anyway, you know, since it’s all shrouded and everything. I’d imagine that at some point you’d have to stop staring up, and start looking at your feet.

And start taking one…(somewhat boring)…step…at…a…time.

Besides, the extraordinary people who get majestically lifted by fate and flown via helicopter to the top of the mountain, seemingly without effort, normally don’t have the strength to weather the storm at the summit. They usually get blown off.

Abra has her little white kitten (a stuffed animal) sitting beside her, and she just keeps saying, “I can read all by self,” then she turns the page and says, “I can read all by self.” She’s been going on this way for about 30 minutes.

It’s quiet in the house tonight. Maile took Cade to his dentist appointment and then lassoed him into a few shopping trips on the way home: groceries, cooking supplies, a late dinner for just the two of them. So it’s a still night here in Paradise: Sam fell asleep around 7pm, Lucy is coloring at the kitchen table, and Abra is on our bed, convincing herself that every page reaffirms her ability to decipher the words.

* * * * *

The lamplight in the living room is dim, and outside it’s dark. I mean really dark. A little bit of moonlight back here in the middle of no where can turn an ordinary night into a silvery kind of dim day, but add a little cloud cover and the only way I’ll walk outside is with my hands extended in front of me.

* * * * *

You can hear the footsteps of God when silence reigns in the mind.  ~Sri Sathya Sai Baba

* * * * *

There is someone else here with me in this silence. Two people actually. I can sense God in the shadows cast by the low lights, in the echos of quiet, in the resigned sound of my exhale. But right there, alongside God, I can also sense myself. A self that gets so lost and scrambled by the noise and busy-ness and constant movement during the day.

It seems that God has never been more apparent to me, and this in the sound of my own breath. Or the lonely turning of the page in a child’s book.

* * * * *

At thirteen years old I went camping with a bunch of guys. We hiked up into the mountains. Our leader took us along a narrow, well-worn trail through trees so thick it felt like walking a narrow alley between high rises. Then we came to a two-foot wide bridge over a deep pool. We dropped our gear, stripped to our undies, and jumped in. The spring water was so cold my heart convulsed, my lungs didn’t want to breath and I swam for my life to the edge of the water.

On the bank, in the sun, I realized I had never felt so alive.

* * * * *

Stillness evades me these days. I spend so much time trying to write, or find that next project, or rush the children off to ballet or baseball or tennis or bed. I wait to wake up until I hear Sam stirring in his crib, retrieve him with a smile and a kiss, then go to the kitchen and start breakfast. There are so few moments like tonight, when all is still. It actually feels like my soul is taking a deep drink. It feels like the only real part of me has just swam like mad for the edge of an icy cold spring of water and has pulled itself up into the warm sunshine.

* * * * *

Is silence extinct? Have we recreated ourselves in an image of noise and bluster and debate and the constant tinkering with worthless things? Are we worried that silence will lead us on a broken path through the wasted ruins of our lives? Would we rather close our eyes and hum loudly to ourselves than be confronted with all that could be rebuilt within us?

* * * * *

“Soon silence will have passed into legend.  Man has turned his back on silence.  Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation… tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego.  His anxiety subsides.  His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.”  Jean Arp

*photo of Abra compliments of Simply.S.Photography

Ahhh, priorities.

Too much to do, and too little time to do it.

I’m finishing two books and starting two more, with additional projects in the works. Good? Yes. Unfortunately, I’ve realized that I’m spending too much time on Twitter and Facebook and the internet in general and, yes, even on this blog.

And since this blog seems to be the root of most of it (because once I’ve written the post then I have to share it on Facebook and Twitter which inevitably means I have to say hi to various friends and comment on other peoples stuff and then I have to check the football scores and oh yes I should check my fantasy league team and then there’s Bryan Allain’s blog and I should really check my wife’s blog and see if anyone else has signed up for her cooking class and wow she has over 100 people liking Mai Time in the Kitchen and holy cow did you see what brett favre allegedly did and I wonder how my dad’s Ameritrade account is going and should I keep SRZ or is that whole company just going to hell in a handbasket I should really tweet about my blog again and then it’s all back-and-forth all day with ken mueller on twitter because he can do about seven things at once and then i realize it’s time for lunch).

Phew. That was tiring.

So I’m cutting back on the blog. Not sure exactly what that means. But I wanted to warn the three of you who read it every day that it probably won’t show up every. single. day (and if it does you need to find out my password and change it and hold the new one for ransom and only let me post every second or third day).

Thanks to all of you for following along for the last nine months. No I’m not pregnant.

Thanks for thinking I have meaningful stuff to say, or at least taking the time to disagree with me (Gwyn and Jason). Hopefully I will still have meaningful stuff to say, every once in a while. Just not everyday.

Hopefully.

Do you have the courage to write what you’re actually thinking? Not just the stuff to which everyone will say, “That’s insightful. I completely agree with you. Great point,” but also the things which will elicit replies like:

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Who give you the right to say that?”

“You’re looking at it all wrong.”

* * * * *

Usually the people we love and respect the most are the ones who mold who we are, who we become and in some ways how we think. But this is a two-edged sword, because it also makes them the most difficult to inform of our deviant opinions or thoughts or ideas.

Are the voices in your head (of your friends and family) shouting at you not to tell the true story? Do these voices disapprove when you begin opening doors to a past that no one wants disturbed? Do their voices argue with you in your mind as soon as you consider sharing an opinion with which they would strongly disagree?

* * * * *

Nearly every repressive government on earth will, soon after their acquisition of power, move to take over any existing form of communication: newspaper and radio. They will try to eliminate or control literary works. Why? Because whoever has a voice, has power. A government insistent on maintaining absolute control will strive to be the only voice.

* * * * *

Own your voice. Embrace your story. Do not let the voices in your head (your parents? your religious leader? your controlling friend or spouse?) tell you that you aren’t allowed to use those words, or talk about that subject, or have that opinion.

The most powerful writing is always authentic. And difficult to write.

* * * * *

Nearly every thought on writing that resides in my brain has sprouted from a seed planted by Anne Lamott. I can take credit for none of it.