Madiba

I probably don't know a tenth of the life that Nelson Mandela had. Growing up in the United States in the 80s and 90s, the only time he was really talked about, to my recollection, was when I watched the nightly news and Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings did so.

I knew he was in South Africa and he was in jail, but I couldn't tell you about apartheid or his political affiliations or even what happened to land him prison in the first place.

I was old enough to recognize the importance of his release from Robben Island in 1994, and his subsequent election as South Africa's first Black president. He's one of those seminal figures in history who as both a journalist and a person, I'd have loved to meet. But when Mandela passed away on Thursday, I did something I honestly couldn't have anticipated.

I cried.

Right in the middle of my office, I found myself breaking down and crying, all because of this quote.

I spent over a year behind bars and by comparison to what Mandela went through for his 27-year incarceration, that is where the similarities abruptly and definitely end. The three prisons I had to live in gave me books to read, television to watch at night and on the weekends and a place to exercise. People could come to visit if they wanted to.

And yes...I had to work hard labor. Instead of splitting rocks though, I split trees. Ten-hours a day, five days a week, with an axe, and made about all of 10-15 cents an hour once you took out restitution and all the fines I had to pay as part of my sentence.

By comparison, my time was infinitely easier than a man locked up by a country and people who both feared and hated what he represented. And yet once a free man again, Mandela somehow had the strength of character to leave everything he brought into his cell there when he walked out.

It's been 15 years and I find myself just as bitter and angry at the world as I was then, if not a little more, in some ways. I get so frustrated every time I get denied a job I know I can do, or a place to live, or a relationship because I still have this perpetual Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, and as far as I know, it's always going to be there.

That knowledge is enough to make any man angry and jaded and bitter, not just with the world they have to occupy but also with themselves for putting it there in the first place. Especially the longer they live and realize that it's still there, even when common sense would dictate that it shouldn't be.

Mandela, because of his influence, understood the necessity both for himself and for those his own people saw as the enemy, to reach complete and total reconciliation with one another. It's not hyperbole to suggest that in doing so, he saved both sides countless lives in avoiding what would've been a brutal and bloody civil war.

Was he perfect? No. Mandela had his faults as much as anyone else, but there's no denying he was a great man, and the world is better off for his having been so.

I didn't learn much about him in school, but I'd like to learn more about him now. I'd like to learn how he did it and the reasons why. Hopefully in doing so, I can learn what I need to and leave those things behind in my own cell, where they belong.

Tilted

I never was as big a fan of pinball as a kid as I've become as I got older. Having been part of the first real generation of kids to run headlong into the world of video games, the idea of popping in a quarter to play it when Donkey Kong, Zaxxon or Punch-out! was much more appealing, it seemed like a waste of cash.

Contrary to common sense, I do go back and reread whatever I post here. I do it because still being the part-time perfectionist, I worry about sounding like a complete and utter idiot and also because I don't want to repeat myself if I can help it.

So I sat down and went back over the last few and came to the following conclusion:

My mind has been flying around like the prototypical pinball, hitting every emotional blinker, ramp, thumper and cushion along the way. I ricochet between happiness, misery, joviality, rage, self-pity, guilt, and confusion.

And it's left me both exhausted and completely punch-drunk.

I know that part of it is because of the time of the year and other circumstances which I have absolutely no control over. Doesn't make it a whole lot easier, but they're tolerable, even if they leave a lingering sting.

The other part is because of conflicts I've created for myself which I haven't been able to totally solve yet. Combine the two and it becomes a rapid-fire cacophony of thoughts and feelings that becomes a blur after too long. It's kept me awake many a night this week, trying to sort it all out and figure out what, if anything, I can really do.

I don't like feeling quite so helpless in my own head like this. It's scary, not being entirely sure what it might be during the day which will make it kick in from one mode to another. Some days it's a song on my iPod, or something on my newsfeed on Facebook, or a half-second flashback that sprang from either the forefront or the deep recesses of my memory.

The trick to mastering pinball is having quick reflexes and to anticipate the trajectory of the ball once it's in motion. You have to be able to control it. Not let it control you.

And then if all else fails, it's not out of bounds to give it a good whack and show it who's boss.

Sheltered Life

My whole life, there's been two things I've really wanted to do.

Learn how to fly a plane...and how to jump out of one with the goal of landing safely on both counts.

I was at the local swimming pool a few years back and while I've never had any issues diving off the low board and while watching kids half my age jumping like daredevils off the 3-meter board and higher, I somehow got it in my head that I could do the same thing, no problem.

Then I got to the top of the board, thinking how hard could it be to step off the end like I'd done dozens of times, launch into the air, turn, and hit the water.

Seemed simple enough. But I couldn't do it. I stepped to the end, saw how high I was above the pool...and totally chickened out. Instead of diving like Greg Louganis, I stepped off and did something likely akin to the Funky Chicken all the way down.

What I took away from it was something I feel has plagued me my whole life. I always wanted to be sure enough of myself to do the things I truly wanted to. But somewhere along the way, I guess I lost my nerve.

I got scared. I got close-minded and conservative and full of the sort of self-doubt that allows me to create grand ideas but shuts me down as soon as I started trying to make them work.

Acknowledging that makes me incredibly angry with myself for not being willing to take more of those risks, because I never thought they'd pan out and I got too full of bullshit to even really try.

For the last month, I've been working on a novel. It's not my first, but it's easily the most personal story I've ever told. The first couple of chapters came pretty easy, but the last few have gotten more difficult. Even though I spend all my time during the day churning out newspaper copy and my weekends talking sports, I've been cutting in a few hours every week to get more done. Whether I'm doing laundry or sitting in bed waiting for sleep to finally hit me, I feel like I'm not happy unless I get a few hundred words down at least.

I know I'm taking a big risk by investing so much of myself in writing a story and making it become a book that other people can read. If it fails, then I know it will hit me hard because I went to the lengths I have. It'll bother me, a lot.

But I'd rather step out there on the edge of this life, just once, and know how that feels to have done something that could be great too.

Tally ho.

Jurisprudence

Higgins' Law:

Sooner or later, one way or another, everybody leaves.

I spent eleven years working as a legal assistant and the last three as a journalist covering local, state and sometimes federal levels of jurisprudence, and if there's one thing I've learned in that time, it's this.

With few exceptions, laws are badly written. That includes my own.

Under scientific method, a law cannot be established unless it first goes through the evolutionary process starting as a hypothesis and advancing to becoming a theory.

No one could disprove that gravity existed even after Newton established his theory that, "What goes up, must come down." Hence, we recognize Newton's Law for what it is today, a fact.

Judicial law, however, is not always created in the realm of fact. It's more the product of speculation, estimation, assumptions and politics, and they often overextend the bounds by which they were created to maintain.

I wasn't all that old when I put my theory together. Having bounced around from place to place so much as a kid, I got used to the understanding that any friendships I made were temporary at best. When I came out to Portland 25 years ago, I planned on this being just another momentary stop before I went back home or wherever else I would end up next.

I didn't plan on staying here or making any friends. When I went back to college five years ago, I had the same mindset. I would just go to class, keep my head down and just follow my own rules, which were all linked in some roundabout way to my law.

The reason it exists is because knowing relationships can be so fleeting, especially when they seem to be with people I grow to love so much that it makes it all the worse when faced with the unpleasant fact that they can and do leave. I use it to remind myself to be ready when it inevitably happens, whether it be through death or some other reason.

The problem with laws, however, is that they often become so rigid and black and white, that they offer no room for flexibility or a change of perspective. Either something is in line with the law or it's outside of it. They are also usually overreactions to specific situations. Not everyone in my life whom I care about left. Many are still there. A few who did leave have actually come back, and a few who I walked away from, I brought back into my life.

I had to learn that on my own the hard way, more than once. In my travels, I've seen how brutal and indiscriminate laws can be.

Maybe it's time I retire this one. I'd like to. I want so much to have some level of permanency in my life that it no longer applies.

Holidays: Stage II

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to Christmas.

Growing up in New England, it's hard to imagine another time, with the exception of the start of Autumn that I got more excited about ever year. After all, how could I not? December brought with it the snow, which meant no school, getting outside and sledding or playing football for hours on end, then coming back inside for hot chocolate and curling up in big warm blankets afterwards.

It also meant looking forward to presents and seeing grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It meant going to Midnight Mass with my Nana and usually falling asleep by the time the homily started, but I figured that was part of what the whole season was about.

I can tell you the exact moment when my affections for this time of the year vanished. It was Dec. 20, 1989. I'm 12 years-old, living in Ayer, Massachusetts, and have been coming off a really rough year. My mother and I had relocated there a few months earlier as we began living with the man who's now been my stepfather for 20 years. For the fifth time in seven years, I'd had to start over in a new town with a new school and meeting new people. We were still about a year removed from getting away from my first stepdad and I'd watched my mother and older brother butt heads over just about everything during that time.

It got so bad, in fact, that my mother decided it was time to do something fairly drastic. Despite his almost being through his senior year of high school, my brother was sent off to live with our dad, 3,094 miles away in Oregon. He and I had never really been apart in our lives and being the youngest, I took it pretty hard, because even though we annoyed the hell out of each other half the time, he was also the only consistent friend I had through that whole period of moving around like we did.

I know my mother thought she was doing the right thing in sending him off, but what it also did in the long run was make me even more uncontrollable, because for all the havoc we both admittedly created, we also were the others safety valves in some ways. At least, he was for me at that time.

He was gone in June and by the time December rolled around, whatever measure of peace my mother was hoping to gain by splitting us up hadn't come. If anything, it'd had gotten worse because I'd gotten worse. I was angry because my brother was gone. I was angry because I hadn't figured out how to cope with what had happened with my stepdad. I was angry because I'd had to say goodbye to more friends, pack up and start all over again when all I wanted was to just stop and have as normal a life as a 12-year-old kid can have.

Fairly or unfairly, I took it out on my mother and her boyfriend and they responded in kind sometimes. In their defense, I deserved it, because I said and did things that warranted their reaction. But I felt so lost inside my head, and at that age, when you're just stepping into puberty and both your mind and body are changing in nanosecond increments, I doubt I'm the only one who feels that way.

I remember one night, my mother and I got into it again and in a flash of anger I told her that if I was so terrible that she should get rid of me too. So she did.

December 20, 1989 was when I was told by my mother that I was leaving and joining my brother and dad in Oregon. "I can't teach you what you need to be a man," she would say in justifying her decision to either me or herself. "You have to go somewhere else to do that."

Two days later, I had to say goodbye again to the small group of friends I'd made, and the girl I'd begun to get attracted to in the way first crushes usually go. My english class gave me a signed card with little notes from each of them. I ended up keeping that for a long time and might even still have it somewhere.

I spent my last Christmas with my family a few days later, doing the rounds through the small towns they lived in and saying my goodbyes while opening presents. To me, it felt more like going to a series of funerals than ringing in the holidays. Some of those people I wouldn't see for nearly 20 years and our relationships were never really what they could've been had I been able to stay.

Dec. 27, 1989, my mother took me to Logan Airport, put me on a plane heading for Atlanta, then Seattle and finally to Portland and that was it. To give you an idea of how different a time it was, I did the whole thing myself. Twelve years-old, three airports, three cities, at Christmas time, solo. Because of issues with the planes, I actually didn't arrive in Portland until nearly dawn the next morning. I wouldn't see home again for five years, and even when I went back, it just wasn't the same place anymore.

So why am I explaining all this? Because this is what I'm reminded of every year when December comes around and it's the reason why I have such a hard time enjoying Christmas.

Now, over the years I've had more than my share of good times during the holidays and that's not to say it's been all one horrible experience. I've also been given the usual, "Just get over it already!" schpiel from a lot of people over the years, including my mother.

Our relationship has never been the same. It's part of why we don't speak to each other anymore, and in all honesty, it may be why I might never see her again. From her perspective, she thinks what she did was right because she had to make a choice between having the life that she wanted or losing it because she had an out-of-control kid to take care of. I don't envy her the decision she had to make and part of me would like to think it wasn't an easy one.

But to me, she gave up. Had she been more understanding of what was happening with me, I'm sure things could've ended up differently for the both of us. Even though I was too young to understand how divorce worked when my parents split, I never had any reason to believe that I would grow up with anyone other than my mother. I remember sitting in my bed as a six-year-old, consoling her because her father was in the hospital after having yet another heart attack. As a 10-year-old, I swore I wouldn't let anyone hurt her after both seeing and hearing how my first stepdad degraded, insulted and abused her. I know how hard she worked and how frustrated she got and I didn't exactly make it any easier.

But I wasn't a bad kid. I was just in a really, really bad place and that was a time when I needed her to step up, understand and help me. Instead, I got a plane ticket...and I got it at Christmas.

I've never gotten over that. I don't know if I ever will, and about this time every year is when I start to really feel it. I do try to make myself happy and not let it bother me, but I don't do much of anything for the holidays anymore. I don't decorate my apartment or buy a tree. Being by myself, I don't see the point, really.

If anything, I get a few presents for friends and people I care about, but even this year, I don't know if that's something I should really do. I'm not expecting to get anything from anyone this year either and I stopped making wish lists a long time ago.

If there's one thing I want this year, though, it's this.

I wish, more than anything, that I could learn to forget.

End of Line

I so wish this was a real status you could post on Facebook. Alas, Mr. Zuckerberg hasn't finished swimming laps in the vault he bought from Scrooge McDuck to update the code yet. So through the magic of a little Photoshop, I can do so here.

I am, effective immediately, officially retired from the dating and relationship game.

This isn't a new development or something that came to me willy-nilly out of the blue. I've actually been thinking about this for over a year and despite my effort to convince myself to the contrary, it just feels like the right decision.

When I got divorced, I suddenly found myself in a position I hadn't been in since I was 18 years-old. Being single. But unlike when I was that age, now I had everything I'd brought with me through those 16 years of the only relationship I'd ever had. Even before that, it wasn't like I had this incredible string of girlfriends to begin with.

Before I met my wife, my longest stint in anything resembling a relationship had been 12 days when I was about 16. Sad to say, that was with a girl who turned out to be rather crazy. Hence why we didn't make it to 13.

*Editorial Note - In the young lady's defense, I was equally, if not more crazy at that age, as the people I went to high school with will likely testify to under oath.

Now in that span, were there girls I was interested in and wanted to pursue relationships with? Yep. Did it ever happen? Not even close. And at the time, I still possessed enough small fragments of self-confidence and self-worth to convince myself I'd be okay. That I'd head off to college, get my career going, meet the sort of woman I wanted to be with and then everything would be what I wanted from there.

That didn't happen either.

So now, here I am, considerably older and with my heart having gone through the proverbial meat-grinder one too many times, I think I've had enough for a while. Honestly, I don't see the point of putting myself back out there. Not right now. I'm not interested and I feel like it would be a waste of both my time and that of whoever would be willing to take a chance on me.

And to be brutally honest, the one I want is impossible, so to suddenly go off and try and find a stop-gap, band-aid to fill that hole just seems stupid, pointless and unfair to whomever I'd try that with. I'm not going to do that. I'm better than that.

If I'd had a good run of relationships that were seemingly like everyone else's then maybe I'd be more confident about trying again. But I didn't, and for right now it just feels better shutting that side of myself off and focusing on what I need to do to get me to where I want to go, than thinking about whether I'm good enough for someone, which I don't feel remotely like I am.

Whatever it is most men possess that makes him keen for a woman to consider dating, I don't have it. I simply don't...and I really don't know if I ever did. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be writing this.

So that's it. I'm done, and I'm not all that upset about it either. If anything, I feel like I'm doing the world a favor by having the self-respect of taking myself off the board. Does it mean I'll never go back on it? I don't know and I'm not going to think about it for a while.

Maybe someday, when my heart feels strong enough again, I'll see. Professional athletes retire at my age and try to come back all the time. Why should I be any different?

Blind Man's Bluff

There's a parable I remember hearing as a kid about the blind man who wasn't really blind. People would ask him how it was he'd lost his sight and he never gave the same answer twice.

Finally, a man who'd listened to his explanations finally approached him and said he knew the blind man could see because his explanations often contradicted themselves, which is the mark of a liar.

"Tell me the truth, sir," the Master said. "Why won't you open your eyes?"

To his surprise, the blind man began to cry. After a few moments, he collected himself enough to say, "Because I was once an evil man, and if I look at you, then you'll look at me and you'll see all the things I've done."

The Master put a hand on the blind man's shoulder and said, "My friend, if you're not the man you were, then see the world as it is now and let it see you for who you are."

My grandmother told me that at a time when I felt so excluded because I didn't seem "cool" or "popular" in school, as most kids often do, sad to say. I admit that as I got older it was harder not to do and nowadays, it's almost commonplace for me to not look at people at all if I can help it.

As someone with eyes as expressive as mine, I do spend a lot of time trying to keep people from knowing what they have to say. For if they are indeed, "the windows to the soul" as the adage implies, then I often shudder to think what you all see when mine open up.

The truth is I feel like they give away too much most of the time. They say things I can't bring myself to vocalize, or maybe put into the proper words. It's why I have a habit of looking away from someone when they make me smile and I close them when I have to say something emotional.

Because if I look at you, there's a chance I'll say too much or say the wrong thing. It's a mistake I've made before.

Too many times.