The Cigar Box

As a child I was fascinated by cigar boxes. It’s not what you think. They smelled like my grandpa. He always seemed to have a stogie in his mouth with one end glowing orange and the other end chewed up. It was great. The best part about his cigars were the boxes we kids got for school the next spring. He would take empty cardboard boxes that had contained his cigars and paint the outside so they looked like the boxes we would get for school. They held pens, pencils, protractors and those lethal weapons known as compasses. I suspect a student would be in major trouble for carrying the stiletto pointed devices into school now. When I was young, we would be in trouble for not having them.

One year, I think it was around third grade (give or take a decade), Pa brought me two boxes. The green one he had made me had an accident. Just after painting, it fell off his workbench and into a pile of sawdust. The lid was ruined. Or so he thought. Ever the frugal Scotsman, he picked it up and added another layer of spray paint over the sawdust-infused lid. It made it something special. I had a rough-lidded box for my desk and a spare one he made just in case I didn’t want that one. I took both, not wanting to hurt his feelings. The one with the weird top was kind of strange. Taking it to school was not high on my list of things to do.

The first day of school arrived and I found myself with two boxes for my desk. I quickly placed both in there, not wanting anyone to notice the odd box. Within an hour, everyone knew about the sawdust-covered box. EVERYONE wanted one. I was cool for a few days. I bragged that I was sure my grandpa could make them for anyone who wanted one. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen. Fortunately, most people forgot.

There are no empty cigar boxes around my place. I did try a King George cigar once, long after Pa was gone. Once! That was one vice I chose to forgo. The one cigarette I tried also made me sick. Don’t worry. I have plenty of other vices. My addiction to chocolate malts is legendary at my chocolate malt addicts support group.

Isn’t it amazing the things that make the biggest differences? Sometime a mistake can be the best thing. When I look back on the last five years of my life and see all the things that have gone so horribly wrong, I am finally grateful. Without all the disasters and catastrophes, I would not be the man I am today. Today, I am a writer, a dreamer, a furturist, and someone who loves life. None of those words would have been used within a mile of me even three years ago. For the first time in a long time, I can say I like the person I am becoming.

The mistakes in my life, like cigar boxes that fell in the sawdust, have turned out for the better. I wouldn’t want to go back to a cigar box without the saw dust. That is what makes it special. That is what makes it mine.

My Madness

I was asked why I write several times a week in my Random Thoughts blog but only write infrequently here. This is where I get serious. This is where I overtly share my thoughts and beliefs, anger and pain, joy and love. Here is where you see me metaphorically naked – none of the obfuscation of my thoughts under a veil of humor. It is here that I write when I have something worthwhile to say. Guess what? I found something that moved me.

 While preparing to write, I will listen to music, watch the news, read a blog, enjoy a podcast, or scan YouTube for inspiration. Last week, my oldest son shared with me something on YouTube that has had me transfixed all week. Jason Silva has a channel called Shots of Awe. (Click the name to check out the whole channel.) He has a passion and enthusiasm that is truly contagious. After watching several of these micro-movies, I came upon one that didn’t just speak to me; it screamed a rock opera that echoed through my mind. It was called “Creativity is Madness”. In this short, Jason compares the mystic and the madman who swim in the same waters. It is the mystic brings back something to share with others.

While sitting in my favorite coffee shop a couple weeks ago, I must admit to looking like the mystical madman. It is really hard to decipher which is which when you are in the moment. There is something that I do that keeps the myriad of story ideas that are constantly assaulting my mind from becoming merged and melded into a misanthropic mess. If you have seen Iron Man 2 or 3, you have seen Tony Stark’s holographic workspace. He can move things around and see how they fit together. I do the same thing with my virtual storyboards – but mine are all in my imagination. No one else can see them. I forget that little details sometimes. The few of my friends who have watched me storyboarding say it is somewhere between “too cool for words” and “a commercial for someone who needs a straightjacket”. It must look more like the latter when you do it while forgetting you are in a coffee shop. One of my fellow patrons was courageous enough to approach and ask me if I was all right. What they really wanted to know is if the things I was seeing were telling me to do bad things and did I have my meds handy. Madman won that one.

I don’t know what to call my madness; insanity, creativity gone viral, a mind that sees the mundane as miraculous. For all I know it’s a tumor. All I can say is that I am seeing possibilities where there was nothing but pessimism four years ago. There is the problem of pain that C. S. Lewis so eloquently addresses in the book of the same name. Friedrich Nietzsche also addresses it quite well when he says: “Only great pain, the long, slow pain that takes its time... compels us to descend to our ultimate depths... I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know it makes us more profound.” (Yes, I did reference Lewis and Nietzsche in the same paragraph. Both have important things to say.) That profound person that has that phoenix-like resurrection from the ashes of pain can see the world more clearly than the paper-man who has no depth and is burnt into ashes. My stories share that sense of rebirth whether it is a man who lacks power on earth only to be indispensable in a spiritual realm or a man and woman who are both terribly broken who find healing with one another. Each time I share some of my own pain through fiction, it bring healing and peace knowing that I have let go and let the phoenix fly higher.

You have to ask yourself the same questions I ask daily: Am I a madman? Am I a mystic? Or am I just me? I think the answers for all of us to those questions is a resounding yes. I am all of the above. The only question is: How mad are you?