Author: crdahlberg

This Piece of Wall

The last time I painted the outside of my house, it took me a year-and-a-half to complete the project. Every two weeks I would scrape, prime and paint a twelve-foot section of the walls and trim. I started at the front of the house, the most visible part that the neighbors would see. Failure to complete the project would be hidden from their view.

Not so long ago, there was a another kind of wall, the notorious Berlin Wall, dividing Germany into two pieces.

The first time I crossed into East Germany, I entered through Checkpoint Charlie, the American military passage leading through that great, foreboding wall that split friends and family apart. Many from the East died while attempting to cross that monstrous concrete bulwark.

The second time I encountered the Wall, Communist East Germany was breathing its last. The Wall was being properly and deservedly defaced; it was ablaze with colorful paintings and slogans of soon-coming freedom. Incredulously, the demise of The Wall had become a celebration of life, an invitation of hope and of promise.

Walls have a purpose, whether good, or whether bad. I don’t always get to choose the walls in my life. But perhaps choosing how I paint them is the next best thing.

Friend for Life

During my recent trip to Morro Bay on the Central California coast, I fulfilled a quest many years in the making. I was pulling on a thread that had been with me since 1969, my freshman year of college.

Soon, Rob showed up in our two-man dorm room in Fischer Hall, teeth blazing behind a mischievous grin, which he never could seem to tame. We were each eager to size each other up. We would be roomies. And we would hit it off.

Somehow, Rob talked me into joining the college men’s glee club that year. Otherwise, my then-introverted nature would not have veered onto such a track. Rob was a second tenor; I was a baritone, and we had a ball.

Rob had several other untamed passions, including a love for acting and the theater. He toyed with the idea of an acting major. The challenge to try out something else new stuck with me. A rivalry began, which I won; I actually picked up more college stage roles than he did.

For our sophomore year, we decided to do the roomie thing all over again. We moved together to an off-campus house. Month after month tumbled along, and Christmas 1970 was around the corner. Rob decided he needed an adventure. He decided to hitchhike the 2,100 miles home to San Luis Obispo.

He nearly made it. In the California desert, the convertible left the road, headed into the sand, and flipped. The owner died instantly. Rob suffered head trauma, arriving at the hospital unconscious. He remained unconscious right through to the men’s glee club spring California concert tour. The entire glee club packed into his tiny hospital room, but Rob never woke up.

For the next thirteen years, Rob did not wake up. I visited Rob one more time during those years. Blind, permanently hunched over in the wheelchair, Rob’s body was pushed out into the grass and sunshine, but he wasn’t there. There was no crazy smile, no tenor voice, no stage presence.

I cannot think of a single day since Rob’s long-delayed death in 1983 that I have not thought of him. This sunny day, in the center of a cemetery, five graves down from his father, I finally visited Rob again.

How fleeting life can be, but how permanent the sway upon each other’s lives.

So, we must live well.

Done with Fear

Two minutes after this picture was taken, a great white shark lying in wait on the muddy bottom of this central Texas stream attacked these folks lounging in their inner-tubes.

There was no great white shark, of course. But fear is often just that unreasonable. Fear of non-existent sharks is Darkness at Noon. And dreaded Night Terrors take over after the sun sets.

All these fears belong in the Litter Boat, located next to our inner tube travelers. But dispensing with fear is not always that easy.

There’s a Fear du Jour, a fear for every day of the year, with some left over. There’s fear of that dreaded conversation. Fear of not finding a job. Fear of finding the wrong job. Fear of that new pain, or itch, or twitch that wasn’t there yesterday.

The defense against unreasonable fear is: channel-switching. Channel-switching is the intentional act of guiding the heart and soul into pleasant pastures.

I had to channel-switch three nights ago after a particularly disastrous day turned me into an unmitigated failure. I knew I was done for. My attitude, my anger, my weight, my finances, my entire future all belonged in the dumpster. I feared my life was out of control.

So I desperately switched channels.

I switched to the channel that played back to me all the best things in my life. True friends. Great mentors. A reliable car. An honest paycheck. An adaptable future. A forgiving family. A loving God.

As I drifted along downstream, I stuffed all the rest into the Litter Boat, helping to turn my gray thoughts into brightness.

Aspiration: The Loudest Message

It’s hard to miss the message that is being sent.

From the leather crown on the head to the toe of the boot, that dude is a cowboy.

Did he actually play a guitar while riding the range? That’s hard to imagine. Probably not.

At least until Gene Autry, the singingest, stummingest cowboy, came along. After that, hats, boots and guitars defined our thinking about cowboys.

Hat and boots and guitar = cool, singing cowboy.

So what’s that called? The thing we are (the hat and boots), plus the thing that we want to become (guitar-stumming coolness) ?

It’s aspiration. Aspiration is the thing we want to become–the thing we most want to be known for, our greatest achievement.

Our aspirations can be our loudest message.

As in: She wants to be a millionaire by the time she is 35.

As in: He is fighting his way to the White House.

As in: She is the most generous person I know.

As in: He is the best friend a person could ever have.

Sing, Sing, Sing

The best music ever, no matter what the style, is the music we knew and loved in our youth.

If you loved Tommy Dorsey then, you’ll love him your whole life long. Sing, Sing, Sing. You’re good.

If your fave was The Beatles, then Strawberry Fields Forever. You’ll be singing it when you’re sixty-four.

If you were into into Mozart in your youth, all is well. Eine Kleine Nachtmusick to one and all.

Into Country music? Get ready to pay for a lifetime of therapy. Somethin’s lookin’ to git ya: truck drivin’, or drinkin’ or wimmen.

Makes you wonder what your own kids are listening to.

The Color of a Thing

For Tootsies Honkey Tonk in Nashville, it’s all about the color purple. It defines the place.

For a dog, it’s all about his nose. Think dog: think nose.

For a person into superstition, it’s all about 13. No thirteenth floor, thank you.

For the homeless, it’s all about a safe place, a safe, impenetrable space.

For a shepherd, it’s about the sheep. 98…99… Oops. One’s missing.

For the hopeful, it’s hanging on to possibilities.

For each of us, we are known by the thing that drives us. If we’re not sure what that is, just ask your friend or neighbor. They will probably know.

Flat Man

I recently heard it put something like this: Men would rather stand shoulder-to-shoulder, together watching the ripples formed by fishing lures cast into a lake. Or cram snacks as they watch a football game on the big screen.

Women, however, would rather be face-to-face, recounting together their experiences of the day, of the week, of the year—-events and times that men cannot even recall whether they were alive.

Many men have a remarkable ability to remain flat. Flat, when occupied with sports. Flat, when relating the events of their workday. Flat when asked to tend to the trash. Flat while silently sorting fleeting thoughts. Like a flounder on the ocean floor, they possess such flatness as to blend in with their surroundings, given away only by their unblinking eyes.

When a woman takes a selfie next to a picture of a giant, flat man, she gains an advantage. For that moment, she can imagine the man in the picture as something that he is not: that he is not flat.

It’s All in the Name. And in the Slogan.

Nudie Cohn, the honky tonk’s namesake, was the creator of the spangled fashions worn by classic country stars.

But it set me to thinking about the power of a name, and of a slogan.

Nudie’s Honky Tonk’s slogan is: “Legends Live Here.”

If I want to become a legend, I should live here. Or, to become a mini-legend, at least pay a visit.

I set out to find some other problematic slogans for real businesses that also make no sense at all:

Nina’s Photography: “I shoot People and Pets.”

Creston Valley Meats: “Our Animals Are Just Dying for You to Taste Them.”

Youth Martial Arts Program: “Building Better Kids One Punch at a Time.”

Chicago Police Homicide: “Our Day Starts When Yours Ends.”

Kiducation: “We Turn Used Clothing into New Kids through Education.”

Four Doors

I count four doors.

Door Number One was not my choice. Mom and Dad opened that one, my birth launching me into this world. Door Number One was all shock and some dismay.

Door Number Two was all about me. It was about my independence from those Door Number One parents. I chose my friends, dreamed impossible futures, fell in love, and found a career—actually, several of them. Later, I discovered it was also about others—my kids, my aging parents, and my friends. Lots of responsibilities and lots of decisions.

Door Number Four is the last door—the end of the trail and the beginning of the greater, Eternal Trail. A life well-lived finds its peace in God, beyond Door Number Four.

Wait a minute. Back up. I skipped Door Number Three. Door Number Three is the journey connecting Door Number Two with Door Number Four. It’s the door of today. It’s the door of now. It’s the door that lets in the neighbors. It’s the door that stoops to serve, and stands to acknowledge. It’s the door of endless, life-injecting possibilities.

At each morning’s dawn, Door Number Three awaits my choices, allowing each day to become an expectation-filled, God-pleasing pursuit.