Category: Life on Earth

Kids, look up.

August 18th, 2018

8/18/18—For my kids.

You gotta look up. Look forward. At the sky. If you stare too much at the ground beneath your feet, you miss out. On smiling strangers. Monarchs bouncing through the air. Clouds that look like animals. Maybe something from last night’s dream.

It’s easy to miss out on opportunity, to put your tail between your legs and mosey along meekly if you are not observing, listening, open for more. Don’t be afraid of getting hurt, losing your way, or failing. Mistakes are for learning. Those that don’t understand that, those focused on perfection, are the most flawed of all. But don’t hold them in poor regard or avoid them. Embrace them. Empathize.

Saturday morning bells from the church down the street. It’s nine a.m. and counting. Seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to weeks and months to…

Is there any time at all? What’s this insatiable desire we have with putting numbers to everything? Clocks and codes. Sizes and calorie count. Weight and height. Cell phone numbers, serial numbers, social security numbers, and those most wanted numbers of all—those that land on our paychecks. How did we get so brainwashed? So controlled.

Ever think about how hard it is to think for yourself? Probably not. Isn’t that part of our problem? We have this magnificent existence with heart and brain and gut and spirit, yet we give it up without much care if it means we will meet someone’s approval. Kind words. A compliment. Our name on a plaque, respected in meetings, or put down in black-and-white print. Shouldn’t the one thing we simply need be our own approval? A recognition earned when we finally find the way to live within the many fibers of this daily existence without losing our happiness.

Some people don’t understand that, and never will. But give them the benefit of the doubt.

It is possible to be a devoted husband and dad but speak honestly about the trials, oddities, and outright foolishness of marriage and family. It’s possible to be best friends if you accept each other’s ugliness. A person can be an excellent employee for a gas station, a non-profit, or a billion-dollar company day-in-and-day-out while questioning capitalism, the thirst for oil, and voting whatever way they damn well please. And a person can do these things while being an artist, an engineer, an entomologist, a doctor, a dreamer, or a drummer in a band. Don’t get caught up in the game the world plays at pitting one side against the other, and don’t look down on others. We are meant to be multidimensional. We are meant to question and learn and share and think and feel. We aren’t here for anybody else, but us. And the trick is that everybody else and everything we do helps make us…well, US.

You can be one thing to one person and another thing to another. And you can do both of them well. Don’t get pigeonholed. Don’t ever become someone’s bitch, even if you have to play the role for a while. That’s what this life is about. Playing roles. Doing what it takes through the art of compromise a little here and a little there without totally compromising the fiber of your being. Remember, it’s quite all right to bend—just never, ever break.

You gotta look up, kids. Look forward. At the sky. If you stare too much at the ground beneath your feet, you’ll miss out. On smiling strangers. Monarchs bouncing through the air. Clouds that look like animals. Maybe something from last night’s dream.

~ K.J
Exploration

October 21st, 2017

We have these great beautiful minds and souls to explore and a whole life to do it. And yet, we shy away or flat out refuse opportunities to open up and learn. We subscribe to someone else’s beliefs. We fulfill expectations that aren’t our own. We pull away, opt for comfort and safety, and slowly lose the ability to think and feel and understand our parts in this spectacular experience.

Rise up. Move beyond boundaries.

Question everything, especially that which you’ve learned.
Maybe you’re not right after all.

– K.J.
last day of February

March 2nd, 2017

artwork by Brooke Stevens – www.horsefeathersartstudio.com

A man stands outside in pajama pants and a hoodie, while the yellow dog sniffs undisturbed snow under the weighty boughs of the sleeping evergreens. And the fuzzy stars shine. Stuck in the middle of fading in, or fading out, and it’s another night of unsettling silence in a Michigan winter that shows no sign of mercy.

Invisible fingers are reaching—touching deep—penetrating his skin. Squeezing with all their icy might to grip, hold tight, and shatter the bones within.

He feels the crack coming. Is aware that this reckless life has filled his fibers with fissures that cannot be repaired. But he believes enough in silly things—like true love, grace under pressure, and finding god on his own—that he musters enough strength each night to fight for dreams that leave him hopeful each morning. And so, he is able to swing his feet over the edge of the bed, put one foot in front of the other, and create meaning in his messy existence and he is able to savor the sweetest things.

Like staring up into the dark blue sky. Getting lost in an instant of bright movement. Brilliant motion that shifts the plates and shakes the core. Makes the warmth rise up inside so that the spirit tingles, and the touch of the dog’s cold nose on his hand gives him the sensation that he’s taking his first breath. That he has been given another chance. To be better and stronger. To live again as if all of this is unfamiliar and new.

~ k.j.
On writing – below the surface

November 13th, 2016

As a writer, my intent is to provide the reader with as little information (but very good information) as possible so they can create the big picture on their own. The danger in this is that the reader brings their own experiences to the work and if they are not willing to unlearn at least some of what they know, the meaning becomes misconstrued.

Writing is very much like life. Some of it is shit. Some of it is moving and memorable. What I like about it is that after all the work I have done, I simply hand it over. Trusting that the reader will see that most of the story and meaning–most of life–is beneath the surface. That knee-jerk reactions based on what they have learned are useless and that to truly enter the story the reader has to let go, give up, and consent to the possibility of being freed again.

-K.J.
trembling with gravity

January 22nd, 2016

January 21, 2016

7:18 pm

It is all here. Somewhere. In between my nine-year-old boy pounding drums in the basement and my daughter watching Scooby Doo on TV. It is out there in the cold night. Crunching under my wife’s feet as she walks home from work. It is in the sky affecting the earth’s gravitational pull. And it is in my right eye—the one that’s been twitching on and off for a week.

I am not even sure what it is, but I know that it is big and small and knowing and forgetful, and that it makes up everything and nothing all the same. Hemingway and Fitzgerald knew about it. Francis Ford Coppola knew about it. Elvis and Robin Williams and my grandparents and my dead aunts and uncles and all the ghosts that make up the past—they knew about it. And I like to think that we know about it too.

Me and you and us and them.

It is in the stories I have started but did not end. In every good intention that’s never received its due follow through.

It is in profanity and love and hatred and bullying and hugs.

It is everywhere.

In damning God and falling to our knees at night, drunk again, to pray.

It is in the soap bubbles, on the sidewalk, on your toothbrush, and wedged into the bark of a tree.

There is so much of it around it’s hard to gather all of it up and turn it into pictures that make sense. Or, at the very least, to make bits into pieces that will wake the few believers that have fallen asleep and become comfortably imprisoned by the suffocating, silencing routine of the day. And because the task is so daunting, the reality of it so haunting, it is much easier to ignore it and carry on instead of dig deep and make differences.

In the way boys beat drums without rhythm, the girls giggle at the flickering TV, and how wives take slow, measured strides as they move through the dark and the cold toward home under a sky trembling with gravity.

~ K.J.
as if tomorrow is coming

January 6th, 2016

Thinking a little

about bills

and savings

and checking.

How we go about

making

ends meet.

Wondering how my kids are doing at school

two days back after Christmas break,

and wishing my wife would quit her job,

just do what it takes

so she can bring color

to the world every day.

I eat candy at my desk

to combat my nerves

knowing full-well

it negates my time on the elliptical,

builds fat

and rots my teeth,

but I am so busy thinking of ways

to make everyone else more money,

moving deeper and deeper

into this unexpected career

and life and routine

that I’m thankful for,

lucky to have,

and earned,

that I forget

what’s important—

time and space and this place and the love—

all of it

is running out and away.

It’s not until my lunch—

a hard salami sandwich and leftover macaroni and cheese—

hits bottom

that I take a seat on the toilet

read the headlines

and get a dose of reality.

The USA Today

shows two galaxies colliding,

making the stuff we’re made of,

and suddenly,

there IT is.

That great sense of dread.

It doesn’t matter if I wipe,

flush,

or get up.

Even if there is a God

and meaning,

and much more work to be done,

all of it will be undone one day.

And there are no guarantees

that all of this beautiful confusion

is teaching us anything at all.

Like you

I don’t know what it is

or what to do

and sometimes

like now

sixteen minutes after nine pm

on a Tuesday night in the cold

of Alpena, Michigan

there is absolutely nothing else to do

but drink wine

and wait it out

as if there’s a tomorrow

that’s coming.

~ K.J.
Bullshit, as Grandma would say.

May 16th, 2015

I want to write what we feel. For the millions. I want to talk about writing, analyze life, and be known as the best. I want you and you and you to read my blog. To buy my books. Post on my wall. I want to receive your questions, comments, and concerns. I want you to know that even though things seem okay on the surface—just plain words strung together so simply—there’s plenty beneath the surface that waits. Some of it is unsettling and confusing, ugly and dark. The kind of stuff your parents, teachers, and your good common sense have warned you about. But all of it is true and feeling it will get you closer to what you’ve always wanted and needed—just to be you.

I want to be successful by helping others succeed. What you see, hear, and experience as a result of reading my words should change you. Make you recognize some of what you’ve lost along the way. Help you get through the day. In my words, you will find the very best kind of friend. One that doesn’t care where you’ve been or what you’re about to do. One that’s always here, a thought away, and if you ask me, I’ll judge you.

I never admitted to wanting these things before. It was selfish and pretentious to want success, fame, money, and glory. But now I see that all of the bells and whistles are simply byproducts of doing good, honest work—of doing what I love.

“Life is too short for bullshit.”

I like to credit that to my late Grandma Wieschowski. I’m not sure now if she ever actually said that to me, but I hear her saying it now.

She and I sit together sometimes, share a Milwaukee’s Best—or six—and dream. She shows me canaries and chickadees at the feeder outside her trailer window. She makes paczkis and speaks to me in Polish, and I understand. I show her pictures of my kids and my wife. She says my son has the same “dark, feisty eyes” as my uncles. That my daughter is a “blue-eyed, tow-headed księżniczka.” She says my wife is “a helluva lot better than those other ones.” And she likes her especially because of her art. “The birds,” she says. “The birds she paints are amazing.” And all of this makes me happy and sappy and warm and I thank God for this gift of imagination, or vision, or insanity that I have.

I show her another rejection letter. This one, a true defeat, from Oberlin College Press.

“If you want it bad enough, you’ll go after it,” she says. And that is all, and we sip our beer, and we watch the birds and everything else she says to me is in silence that I feel.

If we go through life lying to ourselves, denying our motives, intentions, and desires, then we stifle our creativity. We dampen our drive. We live a life of little white lies that build and build and build so that finally there are walls around us so tall and familiar that we don’t have the will to climb them or break through. Our failure is always someone else’s fault. Our lack of success is because of this or that or the other thing. We make excuse after excuse and reason our way to convincing ourselves that the life we live is the one we want and deserve. That we are happy and that we could never want for more.

This is bullshit, as Grandma would say.

The biggest thing we do to destroy our potential every day is to succumb to guilt. We are afraid to question because we are afraid to grow. If we truly wanted to improve our lives and make the spirit stronger, we would question everything—our career path, religion, marriage, choice of friends, and even our efforts at raising kids. When we question, we get closer to knowledge, strengthening the spirit, and Love.

God or magic, the Big Bang, or a very dynamic computer program has put us on this earth—“Believe whatever you want,” that’s what Grandma Wieschowski would say—but know this…you have the power to change the world. To do and have whatever you want and the biggest mistake you make is convincing yourself you’re satisfied. That it is wrong to admit that you want more. And that it is selfish to finally admit why.

I want to write what we feel. For the millions. To be the best. To be your friend and take your hand so that finally, I can pull you beneath the surface and help you see, a little at a time, your everything—the fears, hopes, repressed memories, and dead Grandmas. Your losses and loves. Your strengths and weaknesses.

I want you to go down.

To get uncomfortable.

Be on your hands and knees.

To see and feel where it all comes from, so that finally you remember what it’s like to be you—which is all we ever need.

~ K.J.