Unemployed?

I guess that I could count this as a good thing. I write. I write much. However, I really haven't written for an audience to whom I felt a particular accountability. Now writing everyday I somehow feel that responsibility toward my reader(s) of which I have few. I like to write humor and could do a good impression Erma Bombeck's style. Having so much talent makes it hard to know where to put all that talent.

I have a problem. I take life way too seriously. Recently, I have tried injecting a bit of humor in my writing. On the positive side I find the funny headlines grab attention. You see the struggle. To thy own self be true. Does that include being true to one's pocketbook?

I have started this book about unemployment and the pursuit of its gainful opposite. Having lived these nearly six decades on the earth, I recognize that the powers that run things around here have failed to set things things up in my favor. For example, I believe that the whole cover letter/resume thing may just favor the businesses as opposed to the job seeker. Somehow I think they use this approach to weed humorous writers out the serious business of “making a living.”

My book, thus, has to do with circumventing this resume/cover letter process. I have based the book on two scientific principles (1) Valuing and (2) Six Degrees of Separation. I believe first of all that most people have as their greatest concern in life old number one. I feel okay with that. I think that God has hard wired us such. If we failed to concern ourselves with number one, who would?

Finding gainful employment follows the same route as following a gainful mate. Hear me out here. On a date we usually skip the cover letter and resume. And we usually skip the part about trying to sell ourselves to the potential mate as practiced in a job interview. Instead, we talk about them. “I love your sense of humor. I really enjoy talking to you.” We value them, right? In turn our value goes up in their eyes. My book builds on this principle. Value them. They value you.

Secondly, infiltrate the circles of those with whom you want to work. The job marketeers would have us shotgun the job market with our cover letter/resume campaign. Or they have us pick out one employer and try to convince them of our value. I believe in middle ground here. I say, “Conquer the world. Just make sure you pick a small world.” The book describes how to identify the six-degree worlds out there and make connections within that world.

So today, I throw out this blog to see what interest people have in the topic of unemployment mixed with humor. You don't find it funny? I don't either, but I tried.

Poseidon, Tridents, and Other Mysteries of the Sea

Oregon posted bounty on a fish lovingly called the Northern Pike Minnow aka Sqawfish. You see, Northern Pike Minnows have this bad habit of eating salmon smolt. If you catch enough Northern Pike Minnows, you can earn five dollars a fish. I figured it up sans calculator. All to soon I had visions of a bulging bilge of green-backed Northern Pike and a bulging bank account with green backs of another sort. I untied Lulu from the dock and set out to make my fishy fortune.

Northern Pike Minnows haunt the shallows where small salmon congregate. I own a sailboat with one of those things that sticks down about five feet. We call em keels. They keep one upright in the wind and downright stuck in the sand. The keel meant that I had to anchor out in the rapids as opposed to the safety of the shoreline. Lulu, my sailboat, settled up-stream of a wing dam. I suppose that I have to describe a wing dam for the non-native species among us. Interestingly enough, wing dams have nothing to do with wings or damming the water. Rather they redirect water and more importantly sand flow They help to keep river channels open for commercial traffic—read barges. Wing dams look like a tepee without the skin.

Lulu hated anchoring, and so does her skipper now. She started lunging and lurching at her water-bound tether. I felt before I knew that something had gone awry. Somehow the anchor line had wrapped itself around that keel. Lulu started spinning and slipping quickly toward the wing dam. Wing dams from the road appear rather small in contrast to the mile-wide Columbia. Let me assure you. Up close they have enough bulk to sink a sailboat with one wing tied behind their evil backs.

As Lulu slithered toward the wing dam, I started my motor to keep me requisite eight or so inches away from death. Running forward with a knife in hand (don't try this at home) I cut my anchor and escaped. Anglers watched wide eyed as I nonchalantly eased away from the wings of death. This day I felt glad to have covered my entire body with a water-proof rain suit. It failed to keep me dry on the inside if you get my drift.

All real sailors have a secret suicidal side. It really took little time to talk my friend Dave into an anchor recovery mission. With a grappling hook and fifty feet of line, we transversed the very burial grounds of my anchor. In short order we lost both the hook and the line. Dave has a firmer grasp on reality than myself. “Wait, till Summer. When the water level goes down, I bet you can stand over there and retrieve your anchor. This comes from a guy who fished his cell phone out of eighteen feet of water after having left it there for two days. It still worked. ” I figured with his record that I should listen.

Summer came. I took a pitchfork and carefully probed the river for my anchor. My boating adventure next to the wing dams had garnered some stares. However, if you really want to draw attention to yourself some time, try walking in the river with a pitchfork in your hand. “What's that?” The pitchfork caught on something. I pulled up his grappling hook, his line, my anchor, and my line. I pulled them ashore with a smile as if I always fished for anchors with a pitchfork nice summer days.

I never really understood the whole trident (pitchfork) thing with Poseidon. It makes sense now. For all you Greek mythology scholars it has nothing to do with dishing out godly disciplines on mere mortals. The poor guy just lost his anchor.

Writing with Brown Ink

I would like to tell you that I loved writing ever since I discovered brown ink in my gaping diaper.  Even though I spoke it every day, writing the English language evaded me most of my young life.  Every year the subject grew a little harder.  By the time I reached my senior year I just guessed at punctuation.

With my dread of English I have little idea why I chose journalism as an elective in my senior year of high school.  I just chock it up to one of my many clueless decisions in life.  The journalism teacher gave us a lengthy assignment on the first day of class.  Because it came on our first day, most of the students considered the assignment an unfortunate mistake.  I had a nasty habit doing my homework even if it took all night.  The next day the instructor asked who had done their homework assignment.  Only I raised my hand.  On the basis of that one assignment, she chose me as the paper's editor.

Even though English made little sense to me, journalism for some odd reason did.  It appeared simple enough.  Answer the five W questions, put the important stuff at the start of the article, create a catchy headline, throw in a picture or two, lay it out, and publish.   Fortunately, I had a column called Aden's Anecdotes which required little actual English.  I wrote this pun-filled satire about teachers with the help on an excellent caricature artist.  It usually ran a hundred words at most.

With that illustrious background I marched off to college to pursue a degree in Chemical Engineering which I abandoned when I discovered the true nature of engineering. Do you know that they actually calculate fluid flow through pipes?  I wanted something more exciting.  In another clueless decision I switched to English. They tried again.  I still failed to learn the fine art of writing.

Along the way, I have had  near misses with the writing life.  A seminary professor encouraged me to publish.  A pastor friend sent me to a writer's conference.  A friend explained to me the rules of grammar in a way that I could understand.  I sent an article to a health magazine. Wham, the first time out of the box I got published and a $300 check.  It still represents the easiest money I ever made as a writer. Evidently, fate has either blessed or cursed me and now you.  I'll keep on writing.  I just hope you'll keep on reading.  Oh, and send some money please.

One Season, Two Angels, Three Women

One Season

Charles Dickens walked a winter night and watched white snow turn black in the acidic rain of nineteenth-century England. He saw children as young as five filing from factories dirty, hollowed-eyed, silent,and tired from the long hours of work in dirty factories fired with greed and fraught with danger. Raw sewage from the thousands of horse drawn cabs, cattle, and hogs mixed with human waste that ran down the street into the Thames where London's masses got their water and their cholera. Dickens often walked ten to twenty miles a day through London's filth. Privileged kids sang in a school yard, “Ring around the Rosie, pocket full of poses, Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.” The cryptic song echoed through the streets. Coal fired chimney pots belched black soot that covered London's edifices and coated London's lungs. Two classes of people passed in a cloud of pollution mistakenly called fog. They seldom acknowledged one another, but barriers break down on Christmas Eve.

Mr. Dickens faced his own set of problems. His literary career teetered on failure's ledge with attendant financial ruin. Nineteenth century Britain used debtor's prison as common means of punishing the poor; thus, even a person of Dicken's stature feared poverty. Watching a family trim a tree through a frosty window, he probably reminisced about past, simpler times. Did a father coughing up black mucus tear him back to the present? A man and a nation hung in the balance. Dickens later wrote in The Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of time, it was the worst of times. This night Dickens thought of Christmas past, present, and future. He went home and wrote a haunting tale about greed and death and the consequences of a life spent chasing wealth. Unlike the cutesy Christmas movies we watch on television this Christmas Eve, “A Christmas Carol” paints a bleak picture. In spite of the soot and sewage Dicken's finds a message of hope. People can change, and they can make a difference in the lives of others.

Today I pedaled through a bitter cold wind sucked from Hood River down the Columbia River Gorge into Portland's streets. I stopped my bicycle on a bridge overlooking Interstate 205 to warm my hands and to practice something they call “mindfulness “in psychology. As a writer I simply call in looking--really looking in the same way that Dicken's looked on his twenty mile walks through the city. He observed with all five senses. I attempted the same. The harried air carried no smells as if in too big a rush to carry odoriferous baggage. It's cold sting on my face made me feel strangely alive in it's deathly grip. A dark, gray cloud blanket muted winter's light, and drivers turned on their lights not to see but to be seen. The clock read 2:30 pm. Like a huge Christmas tree, a red string of taillights snaked through the gigantic fir boughs covering hillsides adjoining I 205.

Standing over that highway I thought of Dickens and the world he faced. I thought of my world. A few days ago a young man plotted to blow up thousands of Christmas revelers in Portland Pioneer square at the annual tree lighting event. America fights on the fronts of two wars this night. Iran and Korean could make for two more. Setting a new high for Christmas, gas prices surpassed the three dollar mark. Over-population, pollution, world-wide economic collapse, and threat of pandemics threatens our very existence. Rather than seek solutions, nations fight. Wikileaks exposed them. The Wikileaks founder finds himself in jail.

As in the days of Dicken's Our Christmas Carol has a bleak side. It also has a bright side found in people driven by the cold winds of Christmas that in some way makes one feel strangely alive even in the presence of death and disaster. One finds hope in the random acts of kindness (RAK) performed on city streets without fanfare, at little expense, with no expectation of profit or payback. My Dicken's experience highlights RAK's of five women on a cold day in Portland, Oregon.

Let me start some years ago on a summer day actually to introduce my first woman. Why? Well, she sets the stage for the other four, and she deserves honorable mention in my tale. Please reader, indulge this one anachronism.

Two Angels
I've met two angels in my life—one white and one black. Both came to me during difficult circumstances. Both came to me early in the morning. Some years ago a white lady walked over to me in a forest park in Sandy, Oregon. Only she I inhabited that park that morning. She handed me a tract which simple read, “Publish the Name of the Lord.” I have never seen a tract like it before nor have I seen one since.

“God, told me to give this to you.” As quickly as she arrived, she left. Pondering in years gone by I would even say, “She disappeared.” I felt as if I entertained an angel unawares as the Bible puts it. I glanced at the tract. I had just lost a secure job with Multnomah County in Portland, Oregon. I had a dream to write full-time but had a family to support. I had a decision to make to seek another JOB or follow my dream. She came to me in the midst of this turmoil with that message. I chose writing. Her simple act to obey a higher inner voice had a profound impact on my life.

The other four ladies I met in the Christmas season 2011 in the course of two days. A young, black lady stood on a street corner paralleling the street where I waited on my bicycle for the light to change. Normally a busy street Martin Luther King Blvd this morning could have hosted a church service. We glanced, but before I could appropriate avert my gaze, a smile exploded across the twisted, tortured muscles of her palsied face.

“Merry Christmas.” She spoke with a tenderness that nearly made me cry and makes me cry now. I wanted to kiss that twitching face, but I dared not desecrate the moment or the beauty of my black angel.

“You got your shopping done?” She asked.

“I'm all alone.” I replied.

Most would pity or patronize me. She only said, “God, bless you.” As the light changed, a peace fell over me, and I felt rather than heard a message from my angelic friend that said, “Everything will be okay.” This time I disappeared; however, I think had I looked back I would have seen an empty street corner.

Three Women

Old
Permanently hunched over, she looked up at her world as if looking from under a baseball cap pulled down too far on the her head. However, instead of a baseball cap she bore a gold BMX helmet. She had obviously fallen before and wore the helmet to protect the last valuable asset left her. This little lady walked at her own peril,l but she walked, and she displayed a courage and dignity greater than any helmet bearing athlete I had ever seen. I whispered, “Merry Christmas, sweetheart, as I passed.”

Middle Aged Mom
She had cute face but carried a bit too much junk in the trunk as the kids say. Loud, brassy, and showy she liked drawing attention to herself. She got my attention. I watched her and her two little girls at the checkout. One of the girls had sneaked a pair of pink slippers into the shopping basket. Mom loudly but patiently explained to the little sneak that she had three identical slippers at home. She stopped short of yelling, berating, or slapping her daughter. For once in my life I picked the fast line. I loaded my bicycle trailer as the trio pasted me outside.

“Thank you for taking another car off the street.. Merry Christmas!” She spoke to me before I came to understand that she had directed her comments at my wide backside.

“Well, thank you.” A motorist has never thanked me for riding a bicycle in the years I have ridden Portland's rainy routes.

I head her exclaim as she flew out of sight, “See, girls, that's what we call THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT.” She referred to herself. Showy, brassy, but classy,she had her faults, but she had the right stuff for momhood. Through her faults she taught by example both the value and ease of saying something nice to another. It cost her little, taught her children something, and meant much to me.

Young Oriental
I followed a crowd toward the crosswalk on Powell Boulevard which would take me back to the other side of I 205. She kept looking back at me. Many guys stand my height and many of us unknowingly intimidate small women. I slowed to give her space. She slowed. Everyone left us standing alone on yet another street corner. She looked up into my face.

“Which way to one--two--two street?” She asked in broken English.

I have a horrible sense of direction, but I knew that I 205 runs in the low to mid nineties. “Let's see. We're on ninety-second.”

“Which way to one two two?” She repeated patiently as if to say, “I don't need your rambling. I would like an answer you dumb American.”

“It's that way. She turned and walked over to the bus stop.”

I followed. “Let me check the schedule.” The number nine bus only went to ninety-eighth. It would take her another a six blocks before turning in a way perpendicular to her course. How does one explain that through a language barrier. I tried. I failed.

She smiled at me. “You're so nice.”

I didn't feel so nice. I feared for her, and tried to once again explain.

“Is one-two-two that way?” She asked yet a third time.

“Well, this bus will take you in the right direction.”

She smiled again. She had left for an adventure and had found it and felt satisfied just to travel in the right direction. She seemed nonplussed by the fact that her ride would only last six blocks. I walked away still fretting for her.

Returning to the crosswalk, I looked back to see if she got on the bus okay. She stopped before boarding. She looked over at me, smiled, and gave me a shy little wave. I had made her day, and she mine.

Undoubtedly my little tale has little of the magic afforded Dicken's Christmas Carol, and will probably fail to set me on literature's stage. However, like Dicken's I can say that I stopped and looked. I saw a world in trouble with a coal-dust kind of misery that has clung and continues to clog and cling to man's walk through history. I also saw that glimmer of goodness that reveals itself at this time of year that allows people of different classes, race, and sex to talk to one another and pass on a simple Merry Christmas. Portland, family, and friends I wish you just the same.

Pain

Some say that writers live as tortured souls. I doubt it. I don't know that writers have any more pain than anyone else. Jesus said, "The rain falls on the just and unjust alike." Everyone experiences pain in life. Writers may have an allergy to pain. Allergies occur when the body has increased sensitivity to an irritant. I do believe that writers by nature of their giftedness and the practice of that giftedness may experience pain more keenly than the general populace.

Some turn to alcohol or other drugs to kill the pain which I believe ranks as the biggest mistake a writer can make in life. I do my best writing writhing. For the writer facing pain does not mean developing a thick skin. If anything, the writer should want to feel more.

Some people talk about journaling as a means to deal with pain, to get it out of the mind and body on to a page. They feel unburdened. That particular benefit of journaling has never worked for me. I write with passion. When I journal I feel things more deeply, and I ingrain the pain deeper into my psyche. I learn and remember more when I write. I always take notes at church. Taking notes makes me process more, remember more, and apply more.

I have to exercise caution when I journal. In the past journaling has lead me to the edge of what I can handle. I turned to poetry for processing pain. When I write poetry I tend to get wrapped up in the beauty of the language and the beauty around me. That beauty balances the pain I feel inside. It keeps me a safe distance from the edge.

Recently I lost an opportunity to work for a relief agency that seemed like perfect fit for my passion and talent. They hired me. I met with the co-director. I told my family, friends, and even announced it on Facebook. And then they backed out without explanation or recourse. It all seemed so unfair, so calloused, so hurtful that I really felt at a loss to deal with it.

And so I wrote poetry. For some reason I found myself writing about a Bible personage named Joseph. Joseph's father favored him and gave him a coat of many colors. As a result his brothers hated him. They sold him into slavery. God blessed Joseph with wisdom and success in Egypt. A great famine came upon the earth. Joseph as a result of a dream from God had saved up seven years of food in Egypt. With that food Joseph saved his brothers and father from starvation. It's a poem about having a gift and living misunderstood by family and friends.

Here is that poem.

Recognize

I had a many colored coat
my blessing under cloth remote
judged by my covering
tossed in the pit my own brother's hovering
coat now tattered
sold, slaved, and battered

Stripped of all that mattered
a blessing exposed and scattered
past a family to a hurting world
as abuse from brothers hurled

Embrace pain
polish gifts from God's blessings gain
favor from God and man
free from coat, free to stand

to brothers who to me meant harm
I offer naked blessing's arm
the many colored coat gone
they see the future beyond

from my outer royal cloak still they shrink
can they ever see the real me I think
and remove the blue garb. I weep
your money keep

It's your brother it's me I'm the gift
the one from whom my coat rift
and exposed to develop a blessing
to all the world addressing

their needs met by God through me
now you see
the painful plan
enabled by a gracious God enacted by sinful man

Now let's eat
tell me can I my father meet
tell him my gift shines
of the colored coat remind

him of the son
dead, gone, in pit buried on eagles wings runs
his talent once hidden by coat gaudy
fully developed, gifted, now strong in both mind and body.

from a coated boy now man size
Do you him now recognize?

rollie aden 2010

Un-Unemployed

Sleep escapes me. I have a JOB interview tomorrow and could use it. However, I feel at peace. I write. Today I rode up beside a fellow on my bicycle for the purpose of intercourse, social intercourse as the word used to mean. Portland has a great bicycle system. For the life of me I fail to figure why folks who use it ride as if they still sat in a car. Portland, if you want to isolate, drive. If you want to enjoy relationship, ride. A bicycle poses few barrier between you and the person next to you. Why create one?

I found out that he worked at a restaurant. I told him that I had joined the ranks of the unemployed. I nearly choked on the words. Why do I keep saying that? The dictionary listed four definition of employed. Only one had to do with the exchange of money for services rendered. The other definitions talked about "employed" as the verb one use to indicate the use of time, talent, and energy. For example, "I employed my time reading and writing at the library."

Recently, I decided that I would no longer wait for someone to do something that I can do for myself. I employ myself. I have talents, time, and energy to use now. No one has to pay me to use them. I will not allow those precious commodities to waste and wane waiting for others to accept me as qualified. The deacon complained to the pastor, "Pastor, you're paid to be good. I have to be good for nothing."

I decided to volunteer; rather, I decide give my talents away to others who could use them. I can tell you this. I have had the best week of my work life maybe even the best week of my life. I have never felt so alive, so creative, so useful, so full of hope. In the best sense of the word I self-employed which I can tell you has many more benefits to the self-implosion I did prior.

I have eliminated the U word from my vocabulary. If one proves faithful in employing oneself without money, then employment with money follow. My needs will get met in a big way. Tomorrow, rather today is my birthday. This paradigm shirt truly ranks as the best birthday gift I have ever given myself or received from God.

So my advice to my dear readers, all five of you. If you find yourself unemployed. Un-unemploy yourself right now. You employ you. No one else does it for you. They only give you money. Good night P. town.

Shell Shame

scared, alone
a pile of clothes turtle across the floor
block escape to fear's door
boyhood fear in a man's body now roam

glued to basement bed
neglected middle child
escaped fierce and wild
conquer turtle's dread

scared, alone, tired
a pile of clothes still turtles
man-sized hurdles
rise middle child on turtle backs step up, step higher.