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[nomisterhyde]

This is the thing: When you hit 28 or 30, everything begins to divide. You can see very clearly two kinds of people. On one side, people who have used their 20s to learn and grow, to find … themselves and their dreams, people who know what works and what doesn’t, who have pushed through to become real live adults. Then there’s the other kind, who are hanging onto college, or high school even, with all their might. They’ve stayed in jobs they hate, because they’re too scared to get another one. They’ve stayed with men or women who are good but not great, because they don’t want to be lonely. … they mean to develop intimate friendships, they mean to stop drinking like life is one big frat party. But they don’t do those things, so they live in an extended adolescence, no closer to adulthood than when they graduated. Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either. Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like: “Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? … Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?” Now is your time. Walk closely with people you love, and with people who believe life is a grand adventure. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.

Relevant magazine (via heliophobus)

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What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

Jacques Lacan

(via wordsthat-speak)

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[nomisterhyde]

I’m pretty sure when we fall in love we don’t realise it. We just like that person and eventually we start defending them and get jealous if they talk to some one else. We always want to be with them because they make our crappy lives worth living for a few hours a day. They take away our pain, make us mad make us sad and embarrassed. But no matter what they make us feel we keep coming back for more. That’s just how love is.

Quote Amee Williams (via words-you-love)

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Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.

The History of Love by Nicole Krauss (via words-you-love)

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3/27/17

I was reading through the internet in the way that someone only can at 2 o'clock in the morning when their heart is full and their thoughts are occupied and I came across a blog titled “Love Desperately”. It was made up all of kinds of different things, but I kept coming back to the title. “Love Desperately”

How often is it that we forget to do that. Or are too scared, too shy, too hurt from past relationships. How often do we shy away from those feelings because it’s simply easier than embracing them. When you speak of doing anything in desperation it sounds as though it’s simply a last resort. A Hail Mary shot that has little to no chance of success.

But I think that Loving Desperately is the only way to love. What are we if not our feelings and our thoughts and our emotions. What do we have if we cannot embrace those things and follow them wherever they might lead. Isn’t love at it’s core merely our desperation to find the thing that makes us complete in another? Why even try if not Desperately? Isn’t that what brings out our humanity. Our willingness to pour our heart out and hope that what we find on the other end is someone that pours their heart out in return?

I’ve been hurt, I’ve had my heart ripped out and smashed to pieces by someone that looked me in the eyes and swore they’d never do it, and I’ve been in some pretty dark places because of it. A few months ago I would’ve sat here and written about how I wasn’t sure I could ever do that again. That vulnerability, that desperation. That willingness to say this is me! This is all that I am! Love me!

Life’s funny like that.

It tricks you into thinking you’re in control. That you’ve gotten it all figured out and that you and you alone control your destiny.

Then someone walks into your life and says “Hello”.

Of course, you don’t know it then, but before long, that funny, beautiful, amazing person, they’ve got you, and you went from “nope, never” to reading blogs titled “Love Desperately” and you realize, lying in bed at 2am, that is exactly what you want to do.

DK

[nomisterhyde]

[nomisterhyde]

This. A thousand times this.

[nomisterhyde]

I love being horribly straightforward. I love sending reckless text messages (because how reckless can a form of digitized communication be?) and telling people I love them and telling people they are absolutely magical humans and I cannot believe they really exist. I love saying, Kiss me harder, and You’re a good person, and, You brighten my day. I live my life as straight-forward as possible.
Because one day, I might get hit by a bus.
Maybe it’s weird. Maybe it’s scary. Maybe it seems downright impossible to just be—to just let people know you want them, need them, feel like, in this very moment, you will die if you do not see them, hold them, touch them in some way whether its your feet on their thighs on the couch or your tongue in their mouth or your heart in their hands.
But there is nothing more beautiful than being desperate.
And there is nothing more risky than pretending not to care.
We are young and we are human and we are beautiful and we are not as in control as we think we are. We never know who needs us back. We never know the magic that can arise between ourselves and other humans.
We never know when the bus is coming.

[nomisterhyde]

It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.

Donald Miller

[nomisterhyde]

Hello Old Friend

I’m not sure exactly when it was that I gave up on this.. 

I used to write all the time, but lately, It seems like the hardest thing in the world to do. I sit here sometimes and I search for all the words to say everything that I want to say. I don’t know what those words are. I don’t know how they start, I don’t know how they end, and sometimes I’m not even sure about whats in the middle. All I know is that I have this inexplicable desire to let it all out, even though I don’t even know what “it” is. 

I used to have a place I went to when I wanted to write and have a little time alone with my thoughts. I haven’t been there in a long time. To be honest, I don’t even remember the last time I drove those roads. The place is closed now. The buildings are deserted, the land is closed off, and the place I used to spend so much time now sits empty. I wonder sometimes if it was all a dream. I look back on those memories and sometimes I feel like I’m remembering someone else’s past. Life is funny like that I guess. 

Things have been pretty ok lately. Not super exiting or crazy dramatic, but ok. And I think I’m ok with that… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. I’m not really sure what set it in motion, but for the last few weeks my mind has just been running non-stop. I blame it on having some free time to just sit and be me. 

 The way time passes amazes me. Things can change so rapidly, and so immensely that we don’t even realize that we’ve become this entirely new person. We don’t realize that we’ve left the person we were behind, and have grown into a new one, until we look back randomly one day and realize how different we have become. I know this because it’s happened to me quite a few times over the years. Looking back it seems as if I must have gradually progressed into the person I now am, but I’m not sure that the change was really so gradual. I think it all happened at once, and I was completely unaware of the changes because I had other things to focus on, other things to be happy about for once. I’ve grown to forgive the people around me for the mistakes they’ve made, as well as to forgive myself for taking so many wrong paths. Good, bad, happy, sad, or pathetic this is what my life is. And it’s invigorating. 

I look back sometimes and I wonder when it was that lost myself. I can’t pin point a day or a week or even a month, but somehow the person I used to be just slipped away. Sometimes I miss that person. Sometimes I miss the way things used to be, but at the same time, sometimes I don’t even recognize the words that my own hands have written here. Thats why I write though. Thats why I take the time to put my feelings down into misguided and misspelled jumbles, because I know sometime in the future I will return to those words, as foreign as they sometimes may be. Thats why I write, that’s why I save everything, every quote, every poem, every word I’ve even written because for that moment those were the true feelings in my head and in my heart. And that’s what I do at least 6 times a year. I come back here to those words, to those feelings to that moment. I look back to revisit that person that I used to be, Not because I want to wallow in my regrets or because I wish I would have done this or done that, but because I miss that person that I used to be. As amazingly confusing as that may be, sometimes I do miss the thousands of versions of me that used to exist because each of those versions were amazing in a specific, tho not astounding way.

I’ve done a lot of growing in the last year or so. Some of it was intentional, some of it was forced, but all of it was necessary. The end result is that I feel like I have a better understanding of who I am. I feel like I’ve spent so much time trying to be everything for everyone that somewhere in there I lost myself. That’s a scary feeling.. To wake up all alone and realize that you aren’t even sure who you are anymore. I’m done with that now. I realize now that if it takes losing yourself to have something, then you never really had it to begin with. I’ve lost myself, and now I’m finding my way back. I’m not the guy I used to be, but perhaps that guy wasn’t really the best version of me. Sometimes we grow into bad versions of ourselves, and I see that now. That’s the first step. I’ve also learned to let some things go that I’ve been carrying around with me for a while too, and it’s long past due. Maybe that’s part of growing. Learning to let go. Learning to not let the bitterness of our past hold power over our future. I can see a little clearer now and the view is pretty nice. 

Life has been good lately. In some ways there hasn’t been all that much going on, but in other ways I feel like it never stops. I’ve been spending a little time with someone lately and it’s been pretty good.. I’m always hesitant to say that, because it’s usually right after you have that thought, that it all goes to hell, but I don’t feel like that is going to happen this time. Things are good. It’s good. For once, it’s easy and oh how I’ve missed that. Maybe it’s always supposed to be this way. Maybe we fool ourselves into thinking that all the fighting and struggle is how it’s supposed to be. Some things are still the same though and the world keeps right on spinning. I’ve made some new friends and I’ve been working on regaining some old ones I let slip away. I probably shouldn’t have let that happen, but it’s such a hard lesson to learn, who to hold onto and who to let go, and so often we choose poorly.


The older versions of myself had a rough ride. They lost many things that meant so much to them. But I have gained insight. I have gained knowledge of my world, and I have grown immensely. There are a lot of shoulda woulda couldas out there, but in reality those woulda shoulda couldas are the building blocks that have built this. I never could have become this me, if I wasn’t all those versions first. So here’s to the past, being the past, and to building this future.. 

DK

[nomisterhyde]

Tony Steinberg: Brave Seventh Grade Viking Warrior

"Have you ever seen a Viking ship made out of popsicle sticks 
and balsa wood? With tiny coils of brown thread for ropes,
 Sixteen oars made out of chopsticks, and a red and yellow sail made from a baby’s footie pajamas?  I have. He died with his sword in his hand and so went straight to heaven. 

The Vikings sometimes buried their bravest warriors in ships. 
Or set them adrift and on fire, a floating island of flames. The soul of the brave warrior rising slowly with the smoke.
 

To understand life in Scandinavia in the Middle Ages,
 you must understand the Viking ship. So here is the assignment: 
The class must build me a miniature Viking ship. 
You have a month.  And you must all work together. 
Like warriors.  These projects are what I’m known for as a teacher  .
Like the Egyptian Pyramid Project.  
Have you ever seen a family of four standing around a card table after dinner, 
each one holding one triangular side of a miniature pyramid until the glue dried?  
I haven’t either, but Mrs. Steinberg said it took 90 minutes, 
and even with the little brother on one side saying,
 “This is dumb! This is a stupid pyramid, Tony! 
You’re going to fail this project.
 If I get Mr. Mali next year, my pyramid is going to be much better than this!” 
And Tony on the other side saying, 
“Shut up! Shut up! You little %#@  !
No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Keep holding your side 
or I swear I’ll kill you after the glue dries!”  
It was the best family time they’d spent together since Christmas. 

He died with his sword in his hand and so went straight to heaven, which the Vikings called Valhalla.
 “Mr. Mali, if that’s true, that you would go straight to Valhalla if you died with your sword in your hand ,
then if you were an old Viking and you were about to die of old age, 
could you keep your sword right by your bed
 so if you felt like you were going to die 
you could reach out and grab it?” 
I don’t know if their gods would fall for that,
 but it sounds like a good idea to me. 

Tony was out for a month before we heard what was wrong.
 And the 12 boys left whispered the name of the disease as if you could catch it from saying it too loud. We’d been warned. The Middle School Head had come to class 
And said Tony was coming to school on Friday.  
But he’s had a rough time.  The medication he’s taking has made all his hair fall out, 
and he’s a little shy about it. 
So don’t stare, don’t point, don’t laugh. I always said I liked teaching in a private school
 because I could talk about God
 And not be breaking the law.
  And for an Episcopalian kid who only went to church
On Christmas and Easter,  I sure talked about God a lot.  
In history of course, that’s easy,  
Even the Egyptian Pyramid Project is essentially a spiritual exercise. But how can you study geometry and not believe in a God? 
A God of perfect points and planes,
Surrounded by angels and angles of all different degrees.  
Such a God wouldn’t give cancer to a seventh grade boy.
  Wouldn’t make his hair fall out from the chemo.  


Totally bald in a jacket and tie on Friday morning .
And I don’t mean Tony. Not one single boy in my class had hair;
 the other 12 had shaved their heads in solidarity. 
Have you ever seen 13 bald-headed seventh grade boys, 
all pointing at each other, all staring, all laughing? I have. It’s a beautiful sight. And almost as striking as 12 boys 
six weeks later, now with crew cuts on a Saturday morning, 
outside the synagogue with heads bowed,
 holding hands and standing in a circle 
around the smoldering remains of a miniature Viking ship,
the soul of the brave warrior
rising slowly with the smoke." 

 Taylor Mali

[nomisterhyde]

Writing it Down

My fingers have not itched with such a strong desire in a long time.. Lying in bed tonight, I got that feeling, and the longer I lay there, the harder it got to ignore it. I’ve not been here in a while, sans the normal junk that people post to their blogs as a sort of a keepsake, but my how I’ve missed you. Every time I sit and stare at the blank page, or blank screen I wonder how am I ever going to fill such space. This is how it’s always been for me, the meaning is crystal clear, but the words are illusive. Then the inner voice, the one I keep hidden away, takes over, and with its misguided and misspelled words the blankness begins to disappear. Like puzzle pieces scattered across the floor, it slowly comes together on these pages, both seen by everyone and hidden away, and I accomplish something I can never seem to do inside my head.

As a general rule, I try to not look back.. The past is the past, and for the most part it’s best that way. Things happen, good and bad. People happen, good and bad, and the world keeps right on turning. Then, out of nowhere, a small, seemingly inconsequential event happens and I find myself doing just that… Someone asked me the other day what kind of person I am. Am I giver, or a taker, a liar, or a faker, a lover, or a hater, and a list of other comparisons to choose from, categories of black and white that no real person could ever fit in, and it got me thinking. What kind of person am I? What is it that I have to give to you? Simple. A piece of me.

I’ve skirted around the idea that I started as a whole person, and that along the way I’ve lost pieces of myself in this journey we call life. I’ve talked about it to death in previous blogs but yet I never really gave it any depth. I’ve never really laid it out like I intend to now. Before I get too far into this, I have a small disclaimer. I am not intending this to imply that my value is anymore than anyone else. Or that these rambling, mostly useless words are to prove to you that I am superior. This is just my realization and it’s brought me to a place of finality somehow. It’s brought to a place where I can be me, I can be comfortable, and I can feel as though in the long road, I do mean something. So here is my randomness for you to skim through with (dis)interest.

I’m one of those people that has always felt that there is something missing from my life. I walk around trying to find that final piece day after day, and I will find things that feel right, and I will hold on to them, and yet still that empty place remains. I used to blame it on everything that has happened with my father. Like I could never fill that hole he’s left me with. I’ve realized that’s not the case. Am I angry? Yep Am I bitter? Absolutely. Do I still hate the world sometimes? You got it. Do I feel empty because of everything? No. I feel a lot of things about him, but emptiness isn’t one of them. So why do I feel so empty? The answer lies within the kind of person I have found myself to be. I can be selfless to a degree that I’m not sure I can explain in words. I am the friend that will never give up on you. I am the person that will give up anything to make you feel better, often in detriment to my own well being. I am the one that will give my life for yours, and think about all of these things a little too late and a little too little. This sounds weird even as I type it out about myself, because at the same time, I can be selfish. I can be a dick. I can tell it how it is. I call you on your bullshit. I get heated and upset a lot. My tolerance is high, but when I explode, I have an awful habit of decimating whatever lies within reach. I’m real. So maybe this is the price you pay for the goods you receive from me. I give up a part of my soul to everyone I touch… A part of my heart. I will always be empty to some degree, because the pieces of myself that I long for lie within the people of my past. I gave a part of myself to each person, a different part, a necessary part that makes their life a little easier to deal with. Maybe this is why I find it so hard to let people in my life go because in essence I feel like I am giving up on me. I am giving up on the parts of me that I felt I could do without. I love so deeply and so passionately that I do not see giving these pieces of myself away as anything great. I see it as necessary. A need. I love doing it.

Everyone that I love holds a piece of me that I can never get back. And I realized today that maybe they are better for it. They have never, nor will they ever again, have a person like me in their life. My pieces lie like breadcrumbs in the hearts of those that I have touched, and even if I wanted to find all those pieces, I could never have the heart to take them back. At some point they needed those pieces more then I did, and more than I will ever need them again. All those pieces of me, those little versions of myself, they still exist out there in some small way. I like to think of it like that. Like there are a thousand little versions of me out there conquering the world, because each person with a piece of me, no doubt passes that part of me along to those they come into contact with in their own lives. It sounds crazy, and maybe a little existential, but perhaps I’m not so far off..

Maybe emptiness doesn’t have to be this bad thing. Maybe it’s just a slight reminder that in some small way, I’m changing the world. Maybe my pieces help make other people feel whole and my emptiness is a reminder of that. It’s my incentive to keep living the way I do. To love without limits. I’m a dick, but you love me, and your probably better for it. So, if I were to have to define myself, I would say that I’m a completer. I meet people, I pick them up, dust them off, and in some small way I help fill a tiny hole that allows them to continue on by themselves. I’m not a creator, I’m a helping hand. And I love doing it. It’s my nature. I love finding something broken and helping to fix it. Maybe someday I will encounter another person just like me and I’ll finally become my own finished product.

I almost hope that never happens….

DK

[nomisterhyde]

Scooby Doo taught us that the real monsters are human..

[nomisterhyde]

Dad

As much as some of us fight it, our parents have a mystical hold over us, the power to affect our thoughts and emotions the way only they can. It’s a bond that changes over time, but doesn’t diminish, even if they’re half a world away, or in another world entirely. It’s a power we never fully understand. We’re left only to wonder that when our time comes, what kind of hold will we have on our children? 

This is what I’ve written for my father’s funeral tomorrow.. Rest In Peace Dad.. 2/25/1947 - 6/28/2013

 I’ve written a few words that I’d like to read here, but before I get started, I would like to take a moment to thank all of you for coming here today to remember and honor my father. It means a lot to me and to the family and I know it means a lot to my dad as well. When we were making the arrangements for today we talked about who could stand up and talk about my dad. I was the one that volunteered because I thought I would be able to get through it.. Whether or not that is true will remain to be seen, so if I’ve over-estimated myself, please bear with me.. 

 I have so many memories of my dad that trying to sort through them all to find “the one” to talk about proved to be incredibly difficult.. But what I remember most are all of the times we spent together working on things.. Whether it be pay phones or rental houses or any number of other challenges that we undertook, there never seemed to be a shortage of projects.. Some of them went smoothly.. ehh.. Maybe one or two.. But most of them ended up being a connected series of disasters that “eventually” led to the projects completion. Because it always got done. If it meant installing pay phones in the middle of the night in the pouring rain (and getting shocked repeatedly in the process), getting covered head to toe in paint attempting to spray paint his house, or staying up all night working on a rental house to try and get it finished for a new renter, (with liberal helpings of food from Smitty’s of course) it got done. And if there is one lesson that has persisted into my adult life, it’s that whatever it is you undertake, no matter how big or small, you always finish it. No matter the challenge or the difficulty. it can be done and you have to have faith, no matter how misguided perhaps, in yourself that you can do it. In all my projects and especially in my daily work I always try to keep that with me, and I will always have my dad to thank for that.. 

I’ve spent most of my adult life working as a mechanic.. It’s something that I’ve loved to do from the beginning and still enjoy just as much all these years later. I’ve got my dad to thank for that too. I was reading through something he wrote right before my sister was adopted and in it he talked about how important it was to him to take the time to show me tools and explain how they worked and what they did. And while I think my mechanical ability probably exceeded his around the time I was 13, I certainly have him to thank for the fundamental knowledge that allowed me to grow. 

 Now speaking of cars, my dad and I always had a love/hate relationship with my automotive endeavors.. From the moment I got my first car I couldn’t help but tinker with it… He didn’t always get it I don’t think, but he was usually supportive of it… There are two distinctive memories I have involving my dad and my cars.. the first was the night of my prom, when my dad, trying to help me, out took my beloved Prelude up to the location of our prom so that I could have it to drive when prom was over.. All was good until a well meaning friend of mine saw him in it and for some reason, thought he was trying to steal it. I can only imagine how that conversation went… But I guess my dad showed him the error in his ways. The other involved a car I built to take to the racetrack.. My dad grew up in a time where the cars were made of steel and had big v8’s in them and he never really got the idea that a little 4cylinder economy car could be fast. SO when I showed up at his house with a very unassuming little honda civic on a car trailer I don’t think he really knew what to think.. He gave me the expected hard time about how he was used to “REAL” cars and so on, so with a smirk on my face I offered to take him for a ride in it.. I’ll spare you some of the details and most of the uh.. language, but it ended up with him screaming at me from the passenger seat to SLOW DOWN and take him home! Where he promptly ran into his house while telling me he was calling my mom to tell her how crazy I was for driving something like that on the street. It wasn’t until a few days later that he finally told me he was amazed at how fast it was, but hoped (as only a dad would) that I would be careful in it and not drive it anywhere but at the racetrack.. (advice that I sorta listened to ;) ) 

There is a quote I came across a while back that says “The hardest part of saying goodbye is having to do it again every single day. Every day we face the same truth, that life is fleeting, that our time here is short, and to honor the fallen, we must live our own lives well.” I think that is what my father would want. For me, for Holly, for all of you. He would want us to live our lives well. To take with us the memories of his caring, his thoughtfulness and his kindness. And to let that piece of him live on with each of us. Thank you.. 

Funeral is tomorrow.. 

DK

[nomisterhyde]

7/26/2013

So here I am, hundreds of miles from home, sitting in an unfamiliar hotel, in an unfamiliar place and my mind, it wanders. I was writing in my journal, a real one, pen and paper, and I was trying to remember a quote that I had read a while back, so I fired up my laptop and stumbled across a book I’ve never heard of. I fell in love with it at the prologue… 

Dear you,

You are holding in your hands what was promised to you years ago. I’m sorry that it took so long. But life, as is so often the case, is life and we forget about the promises we’ve made. You, however, are harder to forget. I know the world is crazy. I know love is not always the way it’s meant to be. I know sometimes, things hurt. But I also know that we’ll get through this. That our hearts will arrive on the other side, in one piece. That everything is beautiful, if we give it the chance to be. I’ve tried to write down what I saw and what you told to me and I sincerely don’t think that I’ve missed anything. Let me know if I have. I love you. I miss you. Me 

DK