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Published!

That's right...Relevant Magazine's online mag decided to decorate their front page with an excerpt of my book!

Click here to check it out.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Matrimony"

A book isn’t really a book without a story about love: a man’s love for his country or his religion or his lover or himself. I have an affinity for the Ernest Hemingway kind of love, the kind that never works out in the end because someone dies suddenly and simply. Of course, you can’t really love someone if something inside you doesn’t die. Hemingway was almost right; love demands death, but I believe that death happens somewhere in the heart.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Lunch"

Our lunches came at the perfect time. If I was any younger, I would be too afraid to grow with him while we sit and eat. Now that I am older I can savor knowing my father with truer affection. Though there are times when I wish the process would move faster, I believe that fathers are best understood by the months and years that you spend with them and not just the moments. The zenith of intimacy is the sweetness of passing time.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Surgery"

It was hard to know what to say. Part of me wanted to joke and part of me wanted to say something very loving and sensitive. Either way, I spent most of my time listening to what others said and watching my mother as she endured the waking sufferings of a tedious recovery. When I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t say anything. When everyone kissed her on the forehead as they left, I did too. It was the first time that I remember kissing her. When I wanted to do something to show my support, I brought my guitar into her room and played for her.
Many times Mom was so tired that she couldn’t speak. I think that people’s nearness was more important to her than their words. Me being near her with my guitar was medicine. Music is a good thing for people that are hurting. It is a good thing for binding the wounds of surgery

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Coffee"

And then there were the opening shifts.

I am hard-pressed to write anything about them no matter how caustic. I’d hate to think that those ungodly 4:15 am clock ins would ever get any kind of recognition. Yet, I am strangely drawn to write about them as if I had the burden of retelling a villainous injustice. Bodies were not made to wake up at 3:30 am for work, and with this in mind I offer my eternal applause to those who make a habit of rising early for their occupation.

I’d wake at 3:30. By 3:35 I was out of bed. By 3:40 I wanted to curse at my roommate, who met the sound of my alarm with a lazy sigh and a cozy roll-over away from the pre-dawn melody. By 3:45, I was finished with a three-minute shower that should have been a fifteen minute shower. By 3:55 I was dressed and dry. By 4:00 I was halfway through a bowl of cereal and headlong into bitterness. By 4:05 I was walking down my apartment stairs into the ugly night/morning. By 4:10 I was three minutes from work and nearly thawed out from my sedan’s heater. At 4:13 I pulled up to my store hoping that it was burned to the ground. By 4:14, I was nodding off to sleep amidst the rude sparkle of the 7-11 across the street. By 4:15 the barista I was working with would be there. I’d get out of the car, croak out a mildly pleasant greeting and unlock Pandora’s café.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Matrimony"

The best man in a wedding is the most under-appreciated role player in the modern work world. It requires suave and sacrifice, the ability to sweet talk and strong arm. Plans must made. Hotel rooms reserved. Old friends called. Dinner plans solidified. Fattening snacks to be bought. Poker chips to be remembered. Rings to be protected. Details to be followed. Groomsmen to be herded, quickly and sheep-like. Its the kind of work that deserves a pension plan: shepherd, coordinator, ring bearer, gambler, glutton, maitre'd, operator, concierge and planner all in one.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Matrimony"

After my only serious relationship I was afraid to be vulnerable. It was too painful, a searing menace that was supposed to be the fulcrum of love. One cannot be vulnerable without sacrifice and risk, and these are the gates of love. Emma made it worth it to love. The risk and vulnerability were once again elegant.

This elegance, this brilliant foundation of true charity, is ultimately divine. A man’s natural instinct is to remain a mystery to himself. To love requires an unnatural movement away from secrecy towards awkward freedom. The love of God is the melody of self-sacrifice. There is no allocation for self-preservation. “I do” is a calculated choice. It is also a reckless one, a commitment made in a country where the reality of such choices are mathematically as reliable as guessing on a true/false question. Hemingway had it right. Something must die if love is to have its full and divine course.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Graduation"

Grad school is one long line of hurdles, the straightaway leg with no end. By June, I was damn proud of everything that was behind me. I could remember back to the beginning of my senior year, and how the list of graduation requirements seemed like the middle prong of Satan’s pitchfork. Now the pitchfork and the hurdles lay in one giant heap and I was standing atop of it all with a smirk and a smile.

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"Graduation"

Graduation. When it comes to the speeches, it might as well be a casino. Everyone goes expecting a winner and they leave disheveled and tired from sitting through pull after pull, hoping just once for cherries to cross the screen in trio. About the only difference between graduation and a casino is the lack of cigarette smoke and the absence of cocktail waitresses keeping their customers liquored up long enough to wait for the jackpot that will never come. Besides, who can honestly say that halfway through the generic president’s speech the zombies next to them didn’t look like they needed a swallow of whiskey?

two thousand and seven

From the chapter entitled:

"April 16th"

I have thought about Virginia Tech many times since then. I go back and forth between which experiences were the most significant. Nothing matches the gravity of the first night we spent at the Williams'. Kent and I were so tired we fought to stay awake as we listened to the most harrowing account of murder and tragedy we had ever heard. As I have written, Cindy wept as she recounted her experiences. Matt wept too. Mike was stoic, but in the way in which other men knew that he was only a few words away from being decimated. We listened to the real history of Virginia Tech for two hours on April 18th, told by a mother whose fiercest fears crescendoed and calmed in a matter of minutes. Her children were alive. Her husband was by her side. In this sense, all that should have been well was well, though it was a fleeting respite. And as her testimony came to a close, she said something to Kent and I that floods me with goosebumps and tears even now.

She looked at us, trying her best to articulate the confusion and astonishment that many felt when they heard we had come from San Diego.

“It’s like God sent two angels to us.”

The truth was, God sent us to an entire community of angels. A grieving mother and father opened their house to us, two strangers. Wounded teenagers ambled along a drill field with lunch in hand, ready to give and grieve without reserve. Blacksburg drew us, outsiders, close to her anguished heart. Yet, the kinship of divine mercy made strangers as close as heaven. For me, few days will match April 16th, 2007.