A friend and long-time reader of this website once told me this mid-brow joke:
Three guys are sitting on a city bench waiting for the bus to bring them to their daily routine. One is young, another middle- aged, and the third a retiree, and all three are sporting big grins. The middle-aged guy notices that the other ones are as happy as he, and so he looks over to the young man and asks him why.
“Spent the night with a beautiful woman. You wouldn’t believe how good she was. Best night ever!” He lets the news sink in, and then he asks the middle-aged guy about his happy face.
“Got the best sales deal ever! Clinched a contract over 5 mil, got a big bonus coming and I can almost smell the promotion. I got it made!”
This sinks in for a few moments as all heads nod, just as before. Then the middle-aged gent looks over to the grinning oldster. “And what about you, sir? What is it that’s got you so happy?”
The old guy continues smiling for a while before gushing forth with his own source of happiness. “You wouldn’t believe! This morning I had the best BM of my life!”
Yes, low-brow because of the topics, but the joke rises to something a little higher than that. Being an old man now, I can say that what it tells us is so true: our priorities definitely change with age.
So it is that I identify most with the smile on the old man’s face, but it is not because of our shared physical conditions; rather, it is because I have finally been relieved of something else that has been metaphorically stuck up the old whazzoo for many, many years. It is a book, a novel titled Hurricane River, which was first written some ten years earlier. It is now for sale on Amazon in paperback and in eBook. I know the author’s name by heart: Frederick Keogh.
I write about it here and now, however, as something more than just a promotion. When I started it eleven years ago, it was not intended to be anything more than a throw-away to a dark mood that had struck me and just wouldn’t quit. It must have been February, the worst month in my view, and I was questioning everything that we are told about God. Why all the suffering? And why is nature itself, innocent of having eaten from the tree of knowledge, so cold and ruthless?
With that latter question, the location of my story became fixed: the cabin we have in the pine barrens near Lake Superior. There, not only are the woods dense and scrappy, but the land itself is covered in feet, even yards of snow for up to five months of a year. How can anything even move during those months? And then there’s the Lake: vast and icy- cold even is summer, it is prone to roil up waves of 30 feet or more in a hurry, such as those that sunk the Edmond Fitzgerald. Additionally, a friend and I had recently witnessed a death by auto accident there, of a beautiful teenage girl with red-painted toenails (Written as an essay, “Dark Angel,” in my book Beneath the Turning Stars). Because there is no cell service there, it took at least an hour to get professional help, although the girl had obviously died instantly. Additionally, the Lake claims souls every year with its cold waters and wicked undertows, just as the woods do, from hunters lost in the endless replication of pine and maple.
The location set, my melancholy conjured evil from the hearts of Man in a diverse threesome, one Hispanic, another black, and another white, just to get the point across that evil knows no bounds. For reasons known only to one, the Hispanic leader, they end up killing a family just like mine in a cabin in the pine barrens, just where ours happens to be. Or so they thought that they had killed all three – mother, father and son. They soon discover that the boy, 15 years old (about the age of our son when I started writing this) managed to stay alive after being clubbed with a shovel, and was able to sneak away into the woods. From then on, a two-day chase ensues, the evil ones trying to kill the boy before he alerts the authorities.
He would not stand a chance were it not for the help of Henry the Hermit, a deeply troubled soul who has lived alone in the woods and winter depths for the past 20 years. He had been a Lutheran minister who, at the death of his wife and two children, had blamed himself and fallen apart, and finally put himself into exile by the big lake. There, he loses his sense of his despised self, coming to hear and follow the promptings of a voice or inner urge that he believes to be God. In such a condition, the Voice makes him aware of the murders and the escape of the boy, which then sends him to help the boy in small ways, small ways that are just big enough to allow him to survive. We then are brought to the climax, with a great shoot-out, and the confrontation of the boy with the Hispanic gang leader who killed his parents.
After all this evil, in finality, the wonder of life and the mercy of God are still affirmed. For me, this is what makes the book worthy of publishing. This ending was not planned. I had thought only to expose the horror of this world through both nature and the evils of man, but it turned out that the muses – or what I believe to be the Holy Spirit – had a better idea.
And so it was that a complaint about God and life in general became a God and life-affirming novel. For me, it marked a great step forward for my faith. The reason I had allowed the early draft of the book to sit for so long was from another residual darkness – what was the use? Books are hard to sell. Unless one knows someone in the industry or gets lucky and wins the publishing lottery, nothing will happen with a book besides the loss for the cost of publishing. I have published two other books, well-written as far as I can tell, that attest to this truth. But then, about last Christmas it occurred to me that it didn’t matter. This thing, this product of imagination and what I believe to be inspiration, wanted to be re-made and wanted to live. It is not mine to know for sure why.
So it is with our lives. Why did this happen and not something else? Why did we marry that one and not the other one? What’s the point of having kids but for them to have more kids and continue this stream of existence that bewilders and often betrays meaning and goodness? What do we do it for but to answer an obscure call that comes from nowhere and brings us to another nowhere just as perplexing?
It is life. It is filled with as much meaning as it is not. We cannot understand, but then are given undeniable clues, magical moments, and insights that fade from our limited minds like morning mist. If we do not give up hope, we are led, slowly or all at once, to believe that there is more. We are led to believe that the mystery of the deep, of the universe, is far colder and wider than Lake Superior, yet it speaks. As the whispering of ocean waves, the universe speaks through the solemn presence of the night stars and the warmth of the sun and the unfolding of spring leaves. We are here to listen and to learn. We must not throw it away from lack of understanding, but instead stand in awe at the edge of the sea or under the great dome of the sky and reach until it hurts. Someday, if we kindle that spark of faith, we know that we will know; we know in our moments of stillness that this something will finally unfold before us in a wonder beyond imagination.
So, I believe, the book tells us by the end. Let this bit of folly float away like a leaf on a stream if you will, as it only comprises a few more pages in the infinite library, but it is out and on Amazon and soon, on Ingram. It is out just in case this might be a voice in the wind that brings someone a bit closer to finding that the evil in this world can never extinguish faith and wonder. So we believe; so we hope.
(Note: it is not for children. There are three hardened criminals in it and they speak and act as such with rough language, racial bigotry, violence, and casual references to abusive and loveless sex.)
A friend and long-time reader of this website once told me this mid-brow joke:
Three guys are sitting on a city bench waiting for the bus to bring them to their daily routine. One is young, another middle- aged, and the third a retiree, and all three are sporting big grins. The middle-aged guy notices that the other ones are as happy as he, and so he looks over to the young man and asks him why.
“Spent the night with a beautiful woman. You wouldn’t believe how good she was. Best night ever!” He lets the news sink in, and then he asks the middle-aged guy about his happy face.
“Got the best sales deal ever! Clinched a contract over 5 mil, got a big bonus coming and I can almost smell the promotion. I got it made!”
This sinks in for a few moments as all heads nod, just as before. Then the middle-aged gent looks over to the grinning oldster. “And what about you, sir? What is it that’s got you so happy?”
The old guy continues smiling for a while before gushing forth with his own source of happiness. “You wouldn’t believe! This morning I had the best BM of my life!”
Yes, low-brow because of the topics, but the joke rises to something a little higher than that. Being an old man now, I can say that what it tells us is so true: our priorities definitely change with age.
So it is that I identify most with the smile on the old man’s face, but it is not because of our shared physical conditions; rather, it is because I have finally been relieved of something else that has been metaphorically stuck up the old whazzoo for many, many years. It is a book, a novel titled Hurricane River, which was first written some ten years earlier. It is now for sale on Amazon in paperback and in eBook. I know the author’s name by heart: Frederick Keogh.
I write about it here and now, however, as something more than just a promotion. When I started it eleven years ago, it was not intended to be anything more than a throw-away to a dark mood that had struck me and just wouldn’t quit. It must have been February, the worst month in my view, and I was questioning everything that we are told about God. Why all the suffering? And why is nature itself, innocent of having eaten from the tree of knowledge, so cold and ruthless?
With that latter question, the location of my story became fixed: the cabin we have in the pine barrens near Lake Superior. There, not only are the woods dense and scrappy, but the land itself is covered in feet, even yards of snow for up to five months of a year. How can anything even move during those months? And then there’s the Lake: vast and icy- cold even is summer, it is prone to roil up waves of 30 feet or more in a hurry, such as those that sunk the Edmond Fitzgerald. Additionally, a friend and I had recently witnessed a death by auto accident there, of a beautiful teenage girl with red-painted toenails (Written as an essay, “Dark Angel,” in my book Beneath the Turning Stars). Because there is no cell service there, it took at least an hour to get professional help, although the girl had obviously died instantly. Additionally, the Lake claims souls every year with its cold waters and wicked undertows, just as the woods do, from hunters lost in the endless replication of pine and maple.
The location set, my melancholy conjured evil from the hearts of Man in a diverse threesome, one Hispanic, another black, and another white, just to get the point across that evil knows no bounds. For reasons known only to one, the Hispanic leader, they end up killing a family just like mine in a cabin in the pine barrens, just where ours happens to be. Or so they thought that they had killed all three – mother, father and son. They soon discover that the boy, 15 years old (about the age of our son when I started writing this) managed to stay alive after being clubbed with a shovel, and was able to sneak away into the woods. From then on, a two-day chase ensues, the evil ones trying to kill the boy before he alerts the authorities.
He would not stand a chance were it not for the help of Henry the Hermit, a deeply troubled soul who has lived alone in the woods and winter depths for the past 20 years. He had been a Lutheran minister who, at the death of his wife and two children, had blamed himself and fallen apart, and finally put himself into exile by the big lake. There, he loses his sense of his despised self, coming to hear and follow the promptings of a voice or inner urge that he believes to be God. In such a condition, the Voice makes him aware of the murders and the escape of the boy, which then sends him to help the boy in small ways, small ways that are just big enough to allow him to survive. We then are brought to the climax, with a great shoot-out, and the confrontation of the boy with the Hispanic gang leader who killed his parents.
After all this evil, in finality, the wonder of life and the mercy of God are still affirmed. For me, this is what makes the book worthy of publishing. This ending was not planned. I had thought only to expose the horror of this world through both nature and the evils of man, but it turned out that the muses – or what I believe to be the Holy Spirit – had a better idea.
And so it was that a complaint about God and life in general became a God and life-affirming novel. For me, it marked a great step forward for my faith. The reason I had allowed the early draft of the book to sit for so long was from another residual darkness – what was the use? Books are hard to sell. Unless one knows someone in the industry or gets lucky and wins the publishing lottery, nothing will happen with a book besides the loss for the cost of publishing. I have published two other books, well-written as far as I can tell, that attest to this truth. But then, about last Christmas it occurred to me that it didn’t matter. This thing, this product of imagination and what I believe to be inspiration, wanted to be re-made and wanted to live. It is not mine to know for sure why.
So it is with our lives. Why did this happen and not something else? Why did we marry that one and not the other one? What’s the point of having kids but for them to have more kids and continue this stream of existence that bewilders and often betrays meaning and goodness? What do we do it for but to answer an obscure call that comes from nowhere and brings us to another nowhere just as perplexing?
It is life. It is filled with as much meaning as it is not. We cannot understand, but then are given undeniable clues, magical moments, and insights that fade from our limited minds like morning mist. If we do not give up hope, we are led, slowly or all at once, to believe that there is more. We are led to believe that the mystery of the deep, of the universe, is far colder and wider than Lake Superior, yet it speaks. As the whispering of ocean waves, the universe speaks through the solemn presence of the night stars and the warmth of the sun and the unfolding of spring leaves. We are here to listen and to learn. We must not throw it away from lack of understanding, but instead stand in awe at the edge of the sea or under the great dome of the sky and reach until it hurts. Someday, if we kindle that spark of faith, we know that we will know; we know in our moments of stillness that this something will finally unfold before us in a wonder beyond imagination.
So, I believe, the book tells us by the end. Let this bit of folly float away like a leaf on a stream if you will, as it only comprises a few more pages in the infinite library, but it is out and on Amazon and soon, on Ingram. It is out just in case this might be a voice in the wind that brings someone a bit closer to finding that the evil in this world can never extinguish faith and wonder. So we believe; so we hope.
(Note: it is not for children. There are three hardened criminals in it and they speak and act as such with rough language, racial bigotry, violence, and casual references to abusive and loveless sex.)
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