Author Archives: Paul Steven Stone
Listen To The Wind
Listen to the wind,
the fleeting wind.
Listen to it letting go
the sadness stirring far below.
Listen to the wind
the fleeting wind.
Be like me, the wind said. Never linger over sorrow, never cling to sadness. When I was a child I would run up against walls and stop, just like you, boy. But now I know better and leap from one obstruction to the next as if they were stepping stones.
Be like me, the wind said, and pass quickly over the obstacles in your life.
Listen to the wind,
the rushing wind.
Listen to it hurrying by
like a brakeless train
across the nighttime sky.
Listen to the wind
the rushing wind.
Be like me, the wind said, and never slow down to doubt yourself. When I was a child, boy, I would question where I was going, just like you. But now I know better, and only slow down to rustle leaves and scatter seeds.
Be like me, the wind said, and never slow down to doubt yourself.
Listen to the wind,
the stoic wind.
Listen to it hide the moon
and whistle up a cloudless tune.
Listen to the wind
the stoic wind.
Be like me, the wind said. I never mind the darkness, never ache to see the sun shining in its sky. When I was a child I would fret over clouds, just like you, boy, and spend my energy trying to keep the sun shining through. But now I know that clouds have a rightful place in the sky.
Be like me, the wind said, and learn to live with clouds in your life.
Listen to the wind,
the playful wind.
Listen to it shake the trees
with laughter rustling in the breeze.
Listen to the wind
the playful wind.
Be like me, the wind said, and never take yourself too seriously. When I was a child, I would puff myself up with my own importance, just like you, boy. But now I know that every tree I bend down will only straighten itself once I’m gone.
Be like me, the wind said, and enjoy the game while you can.
Listen to the wind,
the fleeting wind.
Listen to it setting free
the shadows of your misery.
Listen to the wind
the fleeting wind.
The above work was written over 20 years ago, and will be included in a new collection of short works slated to be published in the spring. The collection is titled, “How To Train A Rock”. Please watch for it.
On The Road To Writing My Novel
For twelve years I was engaged in a solitary process that resulted in the publication of my first novel, “Or So It Seems”. Now, less than a year after its publication, I’m out in the world introducing this book to legions of total strangers.
Funny how the universe spins its web.
When I began writing the novel, I was lost and confused and not at all interested in writing a spiritually framed novel. My marriage had broken up, I was bitter and angry, and struggling to construct a life as a single parent of three wonderful but highly vulnerable children. And so, not surprisingly, the novel that took shape was bitter, angry and focused mainly on blame and payback.
But a funny thing happened on the road to payback.
As many of you know, we are each of us walking two paths on our life’s journey. On the first path we encounter our day-to-day struggles, our deeply held desires, our careers, our family lives, our likes, dislikes, quirks and ambitions. The second path, which you could call our spiritual journey, takes us on a much longer and far more obscure expedition. I’ll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than me to explain where that journey originates or where it is taking us, but its main characteristic is that it calls to and enlivens our deepest and truest selves.
Well, without over-stretching the comparison, this novel of mine, “Or So It Seems”, also traveled two roads in its journey to fullness, publication and, yes, self-discovery.
The point of divergence, where one road ended and another began, occurred after seven years. Truth is, I thought I had finished the novel, thought it was done. But after reviewing it, an agent suggested it needed more narrative tension. If I’m honest, it was a well-written, essentially dull tale of a man putting his life together again after divorce. I understood what the agent meant and sat down to create some suspense and tension by reordering a few elements in the plot.
A funny thing happened when I sat down at my computer, however.
The moment I started my rewrite, it was as if a voice sounded inside my head, telling me “Now you are going to write the novel you were supposed to write.” And then began another spiritual journey. Suddenly this kaleidoscope of new ideas, themes and characters started populating my simple storyline; as if by magic, my tale of one man’s divorce became a complex and humorous metaphor for everyman’s spiritual odyssey. Suddenly, my straightforward, linearly-told story became a rich, multilayered plot. And if you think I was excited or pleased, you’re not even close. I was scared to death. Had all that work, I worried—over seven years worth—been for nothing? It was frightening to think of revisiting my novel at that late date, but then again, some of those new ideas, characters and themes were so interesting, so playful, and so much more relevant to my life’s journey than anything I had written before…
Well, as it turned out, the new elements blended beautifully with the old and eventually, five years later, I found myself the author of a multi-leveled, humorous, surprisingly charming and intensely compelling novel. What one reviewer called, “A Rollicking Spiritual Page-Turner.” What I describe as ‘part odyssey, part oddball adventure and totally fantastic.’
If there’s a theme to “Or So It Seems” it clearly relates to perceptions of reality. How we’re so often distracted by what we see as the drama of our lives, that we rarely notice how that drama fits into our larger spiritual journey. Much the way I, in starting a novel about my divorce, failed to see that I had really begun a voyage of discovery, a journey that would lead towards something much larger and far more interesting than the tale of angst, bitterness and blame that had originally inspired me.
Or so it seems.
On The Road To Writing My Novel
For twelve years I was engaged in a solitary process that resulted in the publication of my first novel, “Or So It Seems”. Now, less than a year after its publication, I’m out in the world introducing this book to legions of total strangers.
Funny how the universe spins its web.
When I began writing the novel, I was lost and confused and not at all interested in writing a spiritually framed novel. My marriage had broken up, I was bitter and angry, and struggling to construct a life as a single parent of three wonderful but highly vulnerable children. And so, not surprisingly, the novel that took shape was bitter, angry and focused mainly on blame and payback.
But a funny thing happened on the road to payback.
As many of you know, we are each of us walking two paths on our life’s journey. On the first path we encounter our day-to-day struggles, our deeply held desires, our careers, our family lives, our likes, dislikes, quirks and ambitions. The second path, which I would call our spiritual journey, takes us on a much longer and far more obscure expedition. I’ll leave it to someone more knowledgeable than me to explain where that journey originates or where it is taking us, but its main characteristic is that it calls to and enlivens our deepest and truest selves.
Well, without over-stretching the comparison, this novel of mine, “Or So It Seems”, also traveled two roads in its journey to fullness, publication and, yes, self-discovery.
The point of divergence, where one road ended and another began, occurred after seven years. Truth is, I thought I had finished the novel, thought it was finally done. But after reviewing it, an agent suggested it needed more narrative tension. If I’m honest, it was a well-written, essentially dull tale of a man putting his life together again after divorce. I understood what the agent meant and sat down to create some suspense and tension by reordering a few elements in the plot.
However, a funny thing happened when I sat down at my computer.
The moment I started my rewrite, it was as if a voice sounded inside my head, telling me “Now you are going to write the novel you were supposed to write.” And then began another spiritual journey. Suddenly a kaleidoscope of new ideas, themes and characters started populating my simple storyline; as if by magic, my tale of one man’s divorce became a complex and humorous metaphor for everyman’s spiritual odyssey. Suddenly, my straightforward, linearly-told story became a rich multi-layered plot. And if you think I was excited or pleased, you’re not even close. I was scared to death. Had all that work, I asked myself—over seven years worth—been for nothing? It was frightening to think of revisiting my novel at that late date, but then again, some of those new ideas, characters and themes were so interesting, so playful, and so much more relevant to my life’s journey than anything I had written before…
Well, as it turned out, the new elements blended beautifully with the old and eventually, five years later, I found myself the author of a multi-leveled, humorous, surprisingly charming and intensely compelling novel. What one reviewer called, “A Rollicking Spiritual Page-Turner.” What I often describe as ‘part odyssey, part oddball adventure and totally fantastic.’
If there’s a theme to “Or So It Seems” it clearly relates to perceptions of reality. How we’re so often distracted by what we see as the drama of our lives, that we rarely notice how that drama fits like a puzzle piece into our larger spiritual journey. Much the way I, in starting a novel about my divorce, failed to see that I had really begun a voyage of discovery, a journey that would lead towards something much larger and far more interesting than the tale of angst, bitterness and blame that had originally inspired me.
Or so it seems.
What Happens To Snow That Never Falls?
The following chapter from “Or So It Seems”, a novel by Paul Steven Stone, picks up at a point where the narrator and his son are coming off a disastrous Pinewood Derby, which if you don’t know is an oftentimes hellish father/son cub scout competition.
ADDRESSING THE QUESTION OF WHAT HAPPENS
TO SNOW THAT NEVER FALLS
My little boy is sleeping.
Lying next to him in our shared bed I hear him rhythmically drawing air through his open mouth.
A week has passed and we have not yet spoken of the Pinewood Derby. Truly spoken about it. We have of course mentioned small inconsequential matters relating to the event but only in the peripheral way one talks about the condition of a sick person when he is close enough to overhear.
“Bad break,” I said to him later that day when we were seeking distraction from our sorrows at the South Shore Plaza Food Court. “We almost went all the way.”
“No big deal,” he answered, choosing to focus on the Johnny Rocket cheeseburger in his hand rather than the unstated issues in the air.
The fact that neither of us was ready to bring up the real cause for our discomfort is a good indicator of how tender the wound still seemed.
And what could I say? “I am sorry Old Number Two (our terminally ugly model racecar) looked like such a fruit salad?”
I do not think so.
Which is why a week later I have still not made any effort to clarify and explore that traumatizing experience for my little boy.
Not that I would know what to say.
If the purpose of life is to reach some understanding about the meaning of life I will probably have to retake this Do-It-Yourself Workshop a few hundred times before I am ready to graduate from the program.
To me the meaning of life remains as unfathomable a mystery as it ever was. Perhaps even more so the closer I come to seeing how things work.
I may need to leave it to someone else—to a future Paul Peterson in a future embodiment—to figure things out. He will have to penetrate the false facade of Automatic Universal Misunderstanding (AUM) to discover why I was repeatedly forced to experience something as upsetting—and weirdly ironice, considering my history—as the public humiliation of my only son.
What could be the purpose of that?
And what meaning could it have?
Especially when I recall how often I was told that AUM, Automatic Universal Misunderstanding, is merely an illusion; an illusion shared by almost everyone on the planet. A very believable illusion for sure but an illusion nevertheless.
Maya, as the Hindus have termed it.
“The Great Pretender’s greatest game of make-believe,” The Bapucharya calls it, adding, “He has only to sound the precise vibration and—ohmigoodness!—the physical universe disappears and we are all becoming (pause for giggles) out-of-work actors!”
No I do not enjoy the flavor of my GUM—my particular view of this Great Unrevealed Mystery—and would rather chew on something else. Something less emotionally destructive.
Simply put, I have had enough of…
I feel a soft blow against my shoulder.
It is Mickey’s arm flailing about as his body shifts under the covers, turning from one side to the other.
Without asking permission a smile spontaneously takes control of my facial muscles.
My little boy is facing me now!
Just look at him lying here next to me, his mouth half open, his eyes fully closed, his brow starting to crease in irritated response to the glare of the lamp. Look at the way the eyelid twitches as if a few errant light beams have already stolen their way in.
If the past provides any insight to the future he will soon grow irritated by the glare of my reading lamp and turn back onto his other side. But while he is facing in my direction I will take advantage of this fleeting opportunity to breathe in like a sweet breath of oxygen the spectacle of his unguarded innocence.
Have you ever seen anything more beautiful or with more power to pull at your heart? Lying here propped against my reading pillow, staring over bifocals that have once again dropped to the lower reaches of my nose, I realize how fortunate I am to be given moments like this. Moments where I can reach out and touch him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He would of course shake off my hand even in the midst of his slumbers. But he would shake it off automatically the same way he would shake off an annoying fly. He would not question my right as a bothersome, affectionate father to touch him, to reach out in the night to assure myself he is real and alive.
Why a father would need to do such things is another story, one he would not easily understand. But he would never challenge my right to claim that intimacy just as he would never question the right of the fly to land wherever it chooses.
For twenty three years I lived in the same apartment as my father until he died of a heart attack at the age of 49 and we never shared a bed together, much less one of life’s major disasters like a Pinewood Derby.
I had this thought; actually it is more like a fancy than a thought.
Yesterday here in Boston it was supposed to snow. The weather forecasters had predicted eight to ten inches with a foot more expected up north. What we actually experienced when everything was said and done was an unseasonably warm day in the upper fifties with the sun shining through high wispy clouds. A day as it turned out where thousands of snow shovels were sold in what was possibly the year’s last frenzy of winter storm panic shopping.
Of course weather prediction is far from an exact science, especially in New England, but there is still something dramatic and momentous about a predicted snowstorm that never arrives.
When I was a child growing up in Brooklyn and would watch snow falling I can remember thinking that snow was some physical substance that collected in the clouds until there was so much accumulated it finally broke through. Almost like a mathematical formula describing the inevitable result of supply exceeding storage capacity.
One time when I was in elementary school we were told a major snowstorm was on the way but like yesterday’s storm it never materialized. I recall wondering if someone might have made a mistake about the amount of snow that had accumulated in the clouds?
Maybe enough snow had not yet collected, I reasoned?
Or maybe they were right about the amount of snow piled up but wrong about how much the clouds could hold…?
Well whatever the reason, I was certain that the snow which had been predicted—the snow that did not fall—was still up there, high in the clouds…waiting. Waiting for more snow to collect. Waiting until the clouds were so full and sodden with snow they had no choice but to burst open.
Then of course all the snow would fall down and cover the asphalt streets of Brooklyn in a numbingly soft and pure whiteness.
As a child such simple ideas were the foundation of my understanding about the way things worked. No different, I would guess, from the assumptions and beliefs of most children.
Today when I wander through memories of my father, my mind approaches the subject with the same childlike innocence. And somehow I believe that the love I never received from my father was like the snow that never fell from the clouds. It did not vaporize or cease to exist but was merely held over. Waiting for enough love to collect. Waiting until so much love accumulated it would break through all restraints and finally—freed at last—fall like a gentle snow upon my life and the lives of my children.
As childish as it sounds something in me wants to believe that love builds up in the course of human experience so that if it fails to shower down in one life it will inevitably find release in another.
That same inner part of me knows that the love I share with my children has been made large and overwhelming by the love that never fell from my father’s heart.
That hunger for a father’s love must have colored Dad’s childhood as well, since his father—my grandfather Izzy—was notorious for being a stern and distant parent. Is it any wonder then that Dad, being so unfamiliar with love and how to get it, searched for it so relentlessly outside the boundaries of his family?
Searching for it in his work, his friends, even in the company of strange women.
My father’s tragedy was that he never saw the abundance lying nearby for the treasure that was always beyond his reach.
I believe we are all waiting for snow that never fell. Some of us, the lucky ones, learn to create that snow for ourselves while others only learn to imitate the loveless behavior of their parents.
“Dad,” Mickey mutters, squirming under the covers, “would you turn out the light!”
“In a few moments,” I promise softly. “Turn over now and close your eyes.”
He makes an angry noise and turns over as instructed.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I whisper, tapping him softly on the shoulder.
“Grrr!” he answers.
“I love you,” I tell him softly, almost singing the words.
“I love you, too,” he grunts back with a testy shake of his body.
In scarcely a moment my little boy will be sound asleep again.
Most likely he will never remember waking up.
Most certainly he will never even know it snowed.
*********
For more about “Or So It Seems”, visit OrSoItSeems.info
“Or So It Seems”, a novel by Paul Steven Stone, is published by Blind Elephant Press, $20. It is available on Amazon.com and in a limited number of bookstores in the metro Boston area.