Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Summer is gone, officially, in this part of the world with such sort of schedule and agenda being the officials. I came so far for beauty I left so much behind. I tried to embrace her Fumbled out of pride. She said she doesn't mind She serves one and all. Offered up to be taken I took her yet for more. Now that she's used up A full-stop in place By a man who stole a dot And marked the end of grace. Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, I got into an argument again with my son last night and wrote this: I dive into a different layer Swim with no sound To not disturb you-- No, not again , I say    Never again If I C an I Ever again Swim in a wavelength of       freedom           guilelessness                                        grace            solitude                  and all the clichés of once being young Like you? Yours, Alex

Dear Eugene, Last night I rode my bike to the library.  I think my legs, weak as they are, are getting used to the biking motion.  I've found a new rhythm that works better for my aging body. I stopped halfway to look at a little league of little children playing soccer.  My son was once there. He knew not it was about competition then, and in fact we the parents and coaches did our best to say it is really all about health and character development.  Treacherous was too big a word then to describe the water they were called to navigate in. Soon enough in hassling and ruffling the ideas of competence justice and conquering would find their way to come out of our pores like blood sweat and tears.  Soon enough the parents would get across the sideline to join them in the ring. My son lost too much and got fed up and that's when he quit.  We move on to find new turf that we can finally call our own, a reign we deserve, small as it might be. You ...

Dear Eugene, Last night during her birthday dinner my daughter dropped her phone and gave it a good spider-web crack, a split-second tragedy with lasting and irreversible consequence. My initial response was to look for a new phone (and indeed I did, the easiest thing for this father to do), but finally I decided to put boxing tape over the web and asked her to live with it and find meaning right where it hurts. "Many girls your age, and I can even so confidently say, a vast majority of human living right now shall wake up to a new morning of old brokenness, yesterday's loss that they-- no one --will ever get used to the losing." Years ago, my daughter's birth-year to be precise, the year of 9/11, Rowan Williams said the following: "Islam has a wonderful vision of divine majesty, generosity and glory, and its demand for unreserved loving obedience has great nobility.  But it is a faith that cannot readily find room either for the idea that God longs ...

Dear Eugene, How much do we have to lose before we lose ourselves? It's one of the questions I ask myself daily, usually half way up the hill.  When everything is happening around you, doing is mistaken for being, you don't pause and you don't ask.  You are too busy and occupied to afford an answer. Any answer. I suppose for some it takes no more than a wrong cut on his sideburn for him to go thermal-nuclear on his trusted hairdresser and with that years of friendship and countless words exchanged about life individual and the state of humanity collective. Life is one heck of a tragicomic situation in search of a fairy-tale ending . Imagine one day walking on a big street, big enough to contain all the people you've ever met in your life, with the ones you know the most (or you think know you the most) walking closest to you, and suddenly you just drop dead in front of everyone. Thud. Everybody turns around.  None surprised, for a person does drop de...

Dear Eugene, I was playing in my garden last night, giving all the hedges around my house bad haircut.  If they are teenagers they'd swear to never talk to me again. I don't mind, cos people talk to me when I am out in my garden. Old folks.  Older folks.  Some I have seen before working on their own garden, others in their eyes I saw them looking at me seeing themselves once working on their own garden.  Sometimes they'd stop to talk, if our eyes met, if the beast in my hands wasn't roaring.  More often though they would just give me a big, approving grin, telling me, among many other things, to not take things for granted. Even my toil. I've finally got a chance to talk to the wife of my neighbor, the auto mechanic who suffered a big stroke .  She was walking her pit bull.  I've learned more about him in this 15-minutes conversation with his wife than with all the conversations I had with him over the years added together then times by tw...

Dear Eugene, Have you ever woken up in the morning and felt like you've lost something near and dear to you, that you didn't know where it is...and worst of all, you didn't even know what it is? A sense of inexplicable loss that demands an explanation, in words but more than words. It's like after making love being sent away with a gesture to clarify you weren't really loved after all, desperate texts firing back and forth to salvage a teenage love that is growing older by the second, shriveling into a grotesque finality shivering on the roadside that a passerby can't help but look away. What have I lost?  Why is this loss so profound yet I don't even know what it is? In the movie "Leaving Las Vegas," the Nicolas Cage character sold everything, checked into a motel to drink himself to death.  He read the name of the motel on a sign, " The hole you're in... " I am missing Jesus, I know. When we don't care about wha...