I have five favorite words. Individually, each is strong. Together, in any order, in any amount, they are powerful.

Inspiring.

Life-affirming.

peace
faith
hope
love
trust

Five words; words worth waiting for . . . or searching for, fighting for,
or hoping for.

For many years, the words had become a mantra of sorts, my mythos; so to speak. Not so much an incantation, but more of a statement, or laundry list, of words I believed in.

Then, it seemed, I didn’t.

A few years back, in frustration mainly with myself, the word hope lost its power. By circumstance or consequence, I lost my ability to communicate authentically. My words, my thoughts, my actions and aura, were not connecting, as they should have. I didn’t realize this until it was far too late.

I went numb. I settled into a pattern, and hope never once gave me a nudge. Without hope you are hopeless. I wasn’t. So, I removed the word hope from my vocabulary. It seemed like the right thing to do, at the time.

It came to me at the wrong time, but I realized there is nothing to hope. Hope it is a useless word. Unlike the other four words, hope has no substance. You can know peace, you can feel love, you learn and earn trust, and you can find faith. But all you can do is hope for hope, and that itself says something.

Hope keeps you wondering, hope keeps you waiting, and hope keeps you thinking. There is no resolution in the thoughts hope provokes. You just keep hoping, and that is wrong. Or it certainly isn’t right.

There is nothing tangible to hope. Hope is wishy-washy.

Hope does nothing but prolong pain, anger, or insecurity and fear. Hope, eventually, does little more than create doubt and disappointment. While hope comes from euphoric thoughts or feelings, there is nothing concrete to it.

If anything, hoping creates false hope, or it seems as if that is what true hope is: false. It tends to create unsubstantiated ideals for desiring what may be, when instead you should focus on what you have or what you want.

So I stopped hoping. I began planning.

I settled into a routine I believed would accomplish my goals and remove the sadness I had encountered, simply by staying busy with my plans. And, for a while, it seemed to work. I planned, and I followed through on my plans. They were concrete, they could be adjusted, or altered, or erased. Plans were made, plans were acted on, or plans were dropped. It seemed easier when I didn’t include hope.

Hope is a difficult word; it is tenuous, at best. It lacks definition. I, then, lacked definition. I was lost, and there was no hope. I could not even aspire to hope. You can want, but it is not hope. You can dream, no, you can wish, but that is not hope.

I had stopped hoping.

What I was doing, I thought, was a far cry from hope. But, as you go, as you grow — as I evolved — I then realized you couldn’t erase hope. No matter how I continued to deny myself, hope was always there. It may not always be bright and shiny, but it reaches out, or occasionally whispers from the shadows. Perhaps it is subconscious, but as you plan, as you accomplish even in small increments, there is this bit of hope that keeps you moving forward.

You just have to acknowledge it.

Not including hope in your life is like painting a rainbow without violet; the rainbow is not complete. Life is not complete without hope.

Hope, as a word, has returned to me. I have allowed it back into my vocabulary, and into my life, though I know it never left.

I don’t think you ever lose hope, which is not its nature. Hope keeps you believing, I think hope is what drags you through the grief, or giving-up stage, and keeps you looking further ahead. Hope is the root of all planning.

The thing is, the hope you seek must be self-contained. It’s a lovely thought to hold out hope for someone else, but you don’t really have that power. Hope is internal. In the face of tragedy or despair, I think the greatest hope is how you respond to the situation, and how you deal with the aftermath. Hope is always there, in the back of your mind, or at the core of your being.

It’s when I stopped hoping, that I stopped being.

 

It’s amazing how the written word has the power to stay with you.

We all have favorite quotes, or poems, lyrics, lines, and chunks of dialogue from stories we’ve read, which somehow become trapped in our psyche. We made a connection with the words or found value in the message; they cling to us, returning time and again.

In times of hardship, or heartbreak, the right words can cauterize a wound. Appropriate words can soothe the senses and prolong the pleasure of those moments of sheer joy or passion. The words are always there; the ones we rely on to appease our emotions and guide us through this thing we call life.

More than four decades ago, I read something that continues to come back to me. It wasn’t an epic piece of literature or classic prose, just an everyday magazine article. It was an article so well written that it has permanently changed the way I approach this one specific task.

In 1973 I broke my leg in a skiing accident and spent a few weeks recuperating at home, essentially sitting and reading, mostly in bed. My mom bought me paperbacks, and there were always newspapers around our house, and a family friend brought a couple of bags of magazines from her husband’s reception area. I read, cover-to-cover, Time, Newsweek, People and the New Yorker. I can’t totally recall the politics and personalities, but I am often reminded of an article that has always – subconsciously or consciously – had an impact on me.

The article (for the longest time I thought it was from Reader’s Digest) was titled ‘How To Eat an Ice Cream Cone’. Every time I take a lick, I remember the writer’s well-crafted instructions about the circular motions required, and the art of using your tongue to push the ice cream deeper into the cone as you progress. These practices have now become habit. I am always — always — circling the cone to prevent drips and dripping.

I write about this not because I had ice cream on the weekend, but last year I did one of those mindless Google searches we all occasionally do. I typed “How To Eat an Ice Cream Cone”. Lo and behold, I found the article, the actual article, I read all those years ago. It was not Reader’s Digest, but rather The New Yorker (a magazine traditionally dedicated to all things important). Even though I read it in the ‘70s, I still think of this article when I get one of those cravings.

Now I didn’t remember the “classic ice-cream-cone-eating stance” mentioned below (and surely now I have re-read the instructions I might well take up the posture) but so much of this article comes rushing back.

I’m not sure if I have read other pieces by L. Rust Hills (certainly none as memorable as this one), but you can tell he is a great writer; one of those writers who can take a topic, capture the scene and take you there.

Hills does more than educates and informs. A cautionary tale, the article concentrates less on the taste and texture of the flavorful delight and focuses on the nature of the product, the environmental effects on it, gravity, and the perils of incorrect consumption of both the ice cream and the cone.

I’m always in awe when a writer can take an everyday topic, or other times an operose task, and turn it into something both interesting and informative. The words sink into your memory and actually change how you act or alter your perception.

This is what all writers want to do, each time they write, using the same 26 letters everybody has access to and creating a piece that will be read and remembered. Hills succeeds, on so many levels, providing deft and dutiful instructions to a task everybody takes for granted (“Real pleasure lies, not simply in eating the cone, but in eating it right.”) You can taste the details.

All instructions, for anything, should be this complete. Can you imagine how much easier it would be to assemble a gas barbecue, or install a new laser printer, if the instructions were written better than they usually are?

I’ve attached a link to the article. Yes, at almost 1,000 words, it may appear lengthy, but as you read you may find that the time it takes to read is about the same time it takes to actually eat an ice cream. Real time. Real good.

Delicious.
“How to Eat an Ice Cream Cone”  *

 By L. Rust Hills
 
THE NEW YORKER, August 24, 1968




Grasp the cone with the right hand firmly but gently between thumb and at least one but not more than three fingers, two-thirds of the way up the cone. Then dart swiftly away to an open area, away from the jostling crowd at the stand. Now take up the classic ice-cream-cone-eating stance: feet from one to two feet apart, body bent forward from the waist at a twenty-five degree angle, right elbow well up, right forearm horizontal, at the same level as your collar-bone and about 
twelve inches from it.



But don’t start eating yet! . . .

 READ MORE: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1968/08/24/how-to-eat-an-ice-cream-cone

*Reprinted without permission, but with total respect.

Note: If the link doesn’t work for you, send me an email and I’ll gladly send you a copy.

 

We are all liars.
In that
we find truth.

I don’t like that statement: We are all liars.

It speaks to all that offends us, it ruffles our feathers, it confronts the widely-held belief where truth is a virtue held in the highest regard.

We believe ourselves to be truthful; in many ways we believe it is the strongest plank in our moral platform. We tell ourselves it is our goal, our destination, and our destiny.

Truth.

Truth; we listen for it, we search for it, and we live for it. Fuck, at times we believe it is all we know. Or all we want to know.

We don’t.

So we tell ourselves things to make us believe, we lie to ourselves to make us believe. We lie to others to make them believe, in us. Where we slept last night, how we performed at our workplace (or what we actually do), how we feel about something, how we enjoyed dinner at our best friend’s home – we don’t always answer those questions honestly.

We are liars. We don’t always tell the truth.

We tell untruths. Falsehoods.

Fibs.

Lies.

We might even classify it as a rationalization, a self-medicating myth we feed to ourselves to help us believe we are who we are, and what we are, or to make people believe we are better than we are; even better than them.

We lie to them. And worse, we lie to ourselves.

We say things — under pressure, out of guilt, perhaps in the throes of passion — that are simply not true, things we know will never happen, and still we say them.

We even say them truthfully.

We are all liars.
In that
we find our truth.

 ©2014 j.g. lewis

  “People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.”
                                                                                    – Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Above illustration photographed off the wall of some Starbucks, somewhere in Toronto. The artist’s name was not on the sketch.   Please contact me if this is your artwork, so I can give credit where credit is due.           Much respect j.g.l.

 

Over the coming days we are going to hear a lot about mothers. Whether through media advertising or the chatter about the office, it doesn’t take much to remind us this Sunday is Mother’s Day.

Once a year we collectively honor the person who brought us into this world. One day, surely, is not enough to celebrate the miracle of motherhood.

Throughout our lives we learn, each day, about ourselves, and about others. We learn from mistakes and accomplishments, we learn from teachers, partners, and friends; but at the core of our knowledge are the lessons learned from our mothers.

The first person we imprint on, mothers teach us the basics of eating, sleeping, and living. They teach us comfort, just by being. We learn, through them, the power of a hug, how to communicate, the importance of clean underwear and a good night’s sleep. From our mothers we know kindness, forgiveness, and humility. Sadly, we never fully learn how to appreciate all that a mother is.

Motherhood is the act (or art) of sacrifice. Mothers do what they do to keep their kids safe, and to help them grow. They do it without question. At all ages they comfort their children through skinned knees, prolonged hospital stays, broken hearts and broken marriages. They are there for us, always, in all ways. That’s what makes them mothers.

Mothers give us something to believe in. When hungry, as a child, we knew mom would have dinner on the table, or lunch packed for school. When we had to get somewhere, or be picked up later, it was mom who was there. When frustrated, or disappointed, a mother’s ear was always available.

A mother makes growing up comfortable, they make growing up bearable; they make growing up necessary.

In a world where expectations are high, rules are set, and guidelines placed on just about everything we do, we intrinsically know a mother’s love and acceptance is there unconditionally. And they provide it whether we say thank you, or not.

Mothers give us someone to believe in. My mom, now long gone, remains the greatest influence on my life. She not only provided me with lessons on parenthood by example, she also taught me to believe in myself. In athletic, artistic, or career pursuits, her words of wisdom have always guided me. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”

I haven’t done everything I want (not yet), but I keep trying. I continue trying for me, and for her. Mothers are there your entire lifetime. Even when they are gone, the morals and moments keep coming back.

Mothers do amazing things, every day. In fact, a mother is charged with the most amazing thing of all. The role, in its most elemental description, is being the one to give life. Think, just for a moment, of what a mother is able to produce from her body, a body that is able, has the power and capacity, to produce another human being.

From the womb come eyes that take in beauty, lungs that fill with air, fingers that touch, and souls that transcend time; all produced from a mother’s body.

I can pride myself in what I have been able to give, or pass on, to my daughter, but I didn’t give her life.

Anybody who doesn’t believe in miracles need only think of childbirth. Any one who doesn’t believe in true love only needs to think of their mother.

She first held my hand
five delicate fingers, swallowed up
in my palm. Fingers grasping
                            at my fingers.
Tiny.
No indication of such a big life.
                           There was comfort
                            Reassurance.
                            A small hand, I thought I could
                            hold it forever.
              Tighter
              to keep it there.
              Stop it from growing

The hand has grown, still delicate
                           there
                           in my palm.
Now that of a woman
like no other
a part of me.
Like
no other woman.

                 She is full with 
                 room to grow
                                    to emerge.
                            She is what I have, and
                            the one who is
                                             always there.
As I have tried to be.

A strength more than physical
difficult
to comprehend.
A gentle patience, a
small hand,
wisdom larger than
life itself.

                            I want to hold her hand
                            a while longer
                                                  to reassure
                             I have done something right
                                                          in this world.
When there
I have no questions.
None of myself, as a human being
                                     or otherwise.
                           I host
                           too many doubts
                           which have withered
                           my ability
                           to see.

In her I see what I am and
what I could be.
If nothing else,
the one good thing
I can be
and will always be
to her.

©2015 j.g. lewis