Ornoth

Today, kids grow up with their entire lives digitized and at their fingertips, but those of us over sixty rarely get a high-fidelity look back into our childhoods.

Sure, there might be some faded Polaroids or 35mm slides from major holidays, but those aren’t particularly vivid or easily shared. A majority of our lives—who we were and everything we experienced—exists only in brief flickers of increasingly fragile human memory, ultimately unsharable except as tediously repetitive verbal anecdotes, like those our grandparents told us when we were kids.

So when one uncovers an item that triggers lots of childhood memories and emotions, it’s worth expending some effort to preserve it. In this case, a 40-year-old cassette tape bearing a very special song, which I recently digitized.

Therindel and Daeron cover

Therindel and Daeron On Ravenhill cassette

In 1978 I was only fourteen years old and about to start high school. I’d recently devoured J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and had gotten in touch with a handful of other young fans to found the New England Tolkien Society.

NETS had two publications: I produced a big annual called “MAZAR BALINŪ” (The Book of Balin) that featured art, poetry, fiction, and such (read more about that here); but our regular newsletter was a monthly called “Ravenhill”, named after a fortified spur of the Dwarves’ Lonely Mountain, which was the ultimate goal of Bilbo & Co.’s quest in The Hobbit.

Our Tolkien fan group’s meetings were infrequent, because we were spread out all over the northeast, but we made up for it with enthusiasm, taking on Hobbit or Elven or Dwarven personae, dressing up in costumes, having period feasts, hosting Tolkien trivia contests, and the all-important mushroom-rolling race (using only one’s nose, of course).

Those events were always uproarious fun. Contrary to my home life as a very strong introvert, under my Hobbit persona I surprisingly found myself loosening up and expressing a fun-loving, impulsive side at our gatherings. For me, they were incredibly important experiments in my adolescent social and emotional growth.

It was in that context where, at one of our very earliest meetings, we were joined by a local musician named Tom Osborne, who went by the name “Dæron”, after a minstrel mentioned in Tolkien’s works. He played guitar and sang a folk song he’d composed around a poem written by Marthe Benedict (aka Therindel), a Tolkien fan of international renown.

The song, “On Ravenhill: Gimli’s Song of Parting”, is a poignant one. You may or may not recall that Gimli was the Dwarf who joined the Fellowship of the Ring to help Frodo bring the One Ring to Mordor. Tom’s song takes place long after the conclusion of the War of the Ring, as Gimli says farewell to the Lonely Mountain and Middle-earth, before joining his Elvish friend Legolas in sailing to the Undying Lands: something no Dwarf had ever been permitted to do.

Between the stirring words, so wonderfully performed, and the direct connection to our newsletter “Ravenhill”, everyone who heard it at that early gathering was near tears, despite the fact that we were mostly teenaged boys. There was something about Tolkien’s works that had touched each of us—the sense of wonder, the magnificence of nature, the freshness of youth, the sentimentality and romanticism—and Tom’s music and Therindel’s words captured all of that perfectly. It’s no exaggeration to say it resonated in my heart and lodged itself permanently in my memory.

The version I have on cassette… Over the past 42 years I never played it very often, but—knowing that it was important to me—I hung onto it through my many moves and all the changing roles and circumstances of my life. I’m happy that after so many years, it’s still in adequate condition for digitizing and posting (here’s the MP3), even if the quality isn’t up to modern standards.

Now, like Gimli, in old age I find myself looking back upon an astonishingly diverse, full, and fulfilling life with immense appreciation. I’m not quite ready to depart for the Undying Lands, but I can look back at the many treasures I have found, and savor precious memories such as those evoked by this deeply meaningful song of parting.

Far down the Lonely Mountain’s southern arm
I stand on the grey rocky height
Whence oft of old was sounded the alarm
And winged messengers soared in urgent flight.

(BEGIN CHORUS)
Only on Ravenhill—can you believe it still?
Looking across the green lands;
Mining the metals we shaped with our hands each day
Under the mountain where mystery lay.
(END CHORUS)

Here sun and wind and rain shaped the stone;
Here blood of kinsmen slain have soaked the clay;
And here I stand bent by the years I’ve known
To hear the echoes of a fading yesterday.

CHORUS

I am a living part of all this land—
Each standing stone, each tree a treasured friend,
Each glint of the sun a gem within my hand—
And yet beneath the sun all things must have an end.

CHORUS

I will surrender all I held as worth
And take the westward road across the sea.
A Dwarf of Durin’s race, a son of the earth,
Who dared to crave the lofty Elvish destiny.

CHORUS

So here I forfeit all my mortal right,
And here I render up my earthly will.
I shall leave it all to seek the light,
For I have bid the past farewell.

CHORUS x3

I lost one of my high school buddies recently.

I met Mark through some organized wargaming activity back in the day, and a half dozen of us quickly formed an inseparable pack that lasted for years, with perhaps another dozen occasional co-conspirators.

He was quick-witted, charismatic, and a mischievous instigator of the highest order, probably partially in response to what seemed like a difficult family situation. But whatever the psychological underpinnings, Mark made every day an opportunity for outrageous adventure, which was irresistible to us as a pack of bored adolescent guys.

While I can only relate a small number of our many adventures, here—to amuse my captain—are some of the memories I have of my time with Mark.

Swashbuckling Heroes

Bring in that Floating Fat Man!

Perpendicular Brothers

Summers spent on Water Street in Hallowell, caretaking his grandfather’s antiques shop. Then closing up shop for clandestine and nominally illegal group swimming trips to the local granite quarry.

Days at the local videogame arcade, particularly seeing his “MGE” initials filling the leader board of the Star Trek videogame. “Congratulations… High score!”

Numerous expeditions to some of the most memorable movies of that time: that perpetual source of quotes Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan; the iconic animated feature film Heavy Metal; the laughable ridiculousness of Krull and Beastmaster; and the ill-conceived and too-bad-to-be-funny waste of film called Caligula.

Of course, the hundreds of hours spent gaming. His persuasiveness at Diplomacy. The Fletcher Pratt naval miniatures engagements. Call of Cthulhu roleplaying sessions. Hands full of dice medieval miniatures. The planetary exploration and economics microgame Trailblazer, with its inhuman bookkeeping requirements, leading us to the long-remembered planet christened Fuck You All. And dozens of others.

Even spare-time sessions of “the dictionary game”, where we’d laugh until we pissed ourselves over definitions like “Kenny Kinnikinnick, inventor of Gnip Gnop” or my culturally sheltered inability to correctly pronounce “gifelte fish”.

Dozens and dozens of basement poker games, with stakes ranging from quarters to new wargames, computer disk drives, and upward of $300 in cash. And, of course, Mark’s introduction of his (and subsequently our) two favorite poker variants: Hurt Me and The Bates Motel.

He wasn’t above petty larceny, one night convincing us to steal the US flag from its pole in front of a Maine state office building, using the specious justification that it was a federal offense for them to fly it after sundown without proper illumination.

And then the coup de grace. We showed up early for an evening session at the local game store. While several of us kept Hal, the proprietor, engaged in conversation, Mark retrieved from a nearby top shelf the box containing the materials for a huge plastic model of the starship Enterprise, opened it up, loaded all the contents into his briefcase, closed the box, and returned it to its former location, where it remained unexamined for a year or more. Hence the righteous name of the operation, which will never be forgotten: Free Enterprise. It was really difficult keeping a straight face through the ensuing game session!

Mark left for college 30 miles away, but that didn’t preclude group shenanigans, thanks to careening, edge-of-control rides to Lewiston in Mark’s “Little Red Chevette”. There, he would found the Bates College Imperialists club and propagandize over his college radio show. He’d even open his own game store, which was the scene of my first date with my first girlfriend (appropriately, since we’d met one another at a gaming convention).

After college, I moved to Boston and didn’t have much contact with anyone in my old high school circle. Mark was one of the few of us who escaped Maine, but he might have overreached, moving to Japan to teach English, establishing his own language school, getting married, and bringing up a child. He pretty much fulfilled his vow never to return to the US again.

Although he was an infrequent correspondent, I did receive occasional emails from him. To my complete surprise, when I told him I was doing a bike ride to raise funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, he became one of my most loyal and generous supporters. He is one of only nine people who sponsored me in each of the 14 years I rode, and my sixth highest sponsor in terms of dollars given.

Less than four months ago, I was back in Maine and visited a few of our old buddies for the first time in decades, including Mark’s younger brother Josh. It was interesting seeing how much each of us had changed, and sharing treasured memories of our ridiculous high school antics. They also shared news about the rest of the guys who weren’t around; as you would imagine, Mark’s name came up quite often.

So it was a huge shock to hear from his brother a couple weeks ago that Mark had unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack.

As with my mother’s passing earlier this year, I’m really not sure how to articulate my feelings. Whatever you thought of him, Mark had enough personality for ten men. He was arguably the central figure in our circle, and one of the most important and memorable faces from our adolescence.

I will miss him greatly, and all of the outrageous adventures he launched us on.

I find my relationship to anger has changed pretty radically, thanks to an insight that you might not think is all that remarkable.

Perhaps it seems consequential to me because of the way I used to relate to anger. After surviving the usual angst-filled years of adolescence, as a young adult I pretty much exiled anger from my emotional repertoire. I’d often say that “I never get angry,” and meant it. I always equated anger with loss of self-control, and it was paramount that others see me as mature, self-sufficient, and safe to be around.

It’s only recently that I realized the reason why anger has so much energy: we only get angry when something has touched and threatened something we really care about. Any time that we invest that much of our emotional well-being in something external, we make ourselves vulnerable. And when something important is threatened or hurt, a common response is to become angry.

So the big revelation is just this: anger is a symptom of vulnerability.

For me, this explains the vast well of anger that I (and most of my friends) felt during puberty. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were desperately looking to be accepted and valued by our peers and the people we admired or were attracted to. At that point, we were looking to others to provide us with a level of self-worth that we could rely on as a base for constructing an independent ego. In a word, we felt intensely vulnerable.

When looked at from the perspective that it is a symptom of vulnerability, anger becomes a really useful thing (dare I say a “good thing”?) to see, because anger tells us (and others) what is important to us. But perhaps even more rudimentary than that, anger shows the world that (despite appearances) there’s something there that we deeply care about.

One of my biggest projects this year is to cultivate a deeper feeling of caring, especially toward people. As a result, I have to acknowledge that caring about something or someone puts me in a position of vulnerability. I’ve arrived at a point in my life where the rewards of caring relationships outweigh the risks to my ego. And ironically, seeing my own anger (and vulnerability) being manifested is one way I can actually measure how successful I’ve been at cultivating a sense of caring about others.

Hold me, hold me, hold me down
I love your anger; I love its sound
Burn me, burn me, on your way
I'll reach out to you this day
Older, wiser, sadder, blinder
Color, blisters, imagine the splendor!

So I’m starting to accept that it’s actually okay to feel angry, to admit feeling it, and to show anger publicly. It’s also okay to stay angry—even after receiving an apology, if I still feel hurt or that something I care about is threatened.

As an added bonus, I’m also seeing other people’s anger from a new perspective, and have learned some new and effective ways of relating to people when they are angry…

When we are interacting with someone who becomes visibly angry, we often either step away and distance ourselves, resist it by taking up an opposing stance, or invalidate their feelings. Whichever of these actions we take, it only reinforces and strengthens their anger.

We don’t often pause to ask about and discover what that person actually cares about and how it is threatened. During a tense situation, asking these simple questions shows respect and openness toward hearing what the angry person has to say. And it’s hard to stay angry when someone sincerely wants to understand the reason behind your pain.

All that is why I think it’s an insight worth sharing.

When I was a kid, I thought Jeeps were kind of cool. They were the kind of rough and tumble go anywhere vehicles that appeal to the same kind of spirit as cyclocross: someone who revels in being a little strange and getting a bit dirty.

That was about as far as that unspoken desire ever went, at least until last week, when I found myself in sole possession of a rental Jeep Wrangler for a week on the mountainous little island of St. Thomas.

Needless to say, the thing is stupid fun. It’s small and light, which makes it vastly preferable to the four-door behemoth we rented at the same time, which does nothing to earn its “Wrangler” nameplate.

There’s no way you can beat driving under the stars with the soft top down, with ska and 80s tunes playing through the stereo via your iPoo. The Wrangler took to the rough, windy, narrow, hilly roads like a drunk, top-heavy gazelle, making it a, uhh, pleasure to drive.

Between the sheer fun-ness of driving it, plus the liberating ability to drive over just about any kind of terrian, it felt very much like the first thrill of freedom I got when I first started driving back in high school. And if it gets dirty, just drive it back and forth through a small lake a few times!

Like I say, it was stupid fun. I’ll miss it when we eventually have to leave Fantasy Island.

I recently read David Kundtz’s “Nothing’s Wrong: A Man’s Guide to Managing His Feelings”.

I guess the first thing to relate is why that book interested me. I grew up in a family where little to no emotion was visibly manifested. I was extremely introverted and intellectual. As an adolescent, I found myself becoming ever more angry, selfish, and hateful.

Then I started dating, which was an immensely transformative experience for me. I was confused by how impulsive my first girlfriend could be, and jealous of her stunningly carefree demeanor. I decided to try to incorporate this lesson into my life, thereby gaining a previously absent appreciation for beauty, nature, kindness, and humor.

Back then, I didn’t think the intellectual and the emotional halves of my personality could coexist, so I created separate, distinct identities for them. “David” was cold, calculating, and intellectual, while “Ornoth” was impulsive, open, and joyous. One or the other would be predominant for six months to a year, while the other popped up at odd moments, and then they’d reverse. In those days, someone close to me could see in my eyes when I switched gears. That took me through college and into marriage.

Despite all that, I guess the trend was for the cold intellectual to gradually reassert itself. My ex-wife’s parting shot to me was to give me a Mr. Spock tee shirt for my birthday, an unabashed reference to my lack of warmth toward her.

In the fifteen years since my divorce, I’ve changed more radically than I ever thought possible, but the basic disconnect with my emotions has persisted. I’ve worked hard to develop compassion and generosity, but no matter how hard I look, I can’t seem to detect what most women tell me is the essence of life: my emotions.

It’s undoubtedly a difficult thing for a woman to understand: that a man really doesn’t have the emotional range or insight into his emotions that is so basic to her. I can’t speak for any other men, but I don’t think I’m alone when I admit that I’ve spent much of my life honestly doubting whether I have any emotions at all, and whether I could ever detect any I had, however hard I try.

Thus, the book.

The first thing the book establishes is that men need a different vocabulary to talk about their emotions. Women’s emotions come from their hearts, but men feel things “in their gut”. By drawing attention to the body’s physical reactions, Kundtz actually echoed themes I’ve heard in my Buddhist studies, which emphasize the physical form and its state changes as the place to look for evidence of emotional activity.

The next logical step is, of course, for a man to become more aware of the changes in his body. That would seem like a potentially productive line of inquiry, although I found the way it was presented a bit unhelpful.

“The very first and vitally important thing you have to do in dealing with any feeling is really something that you must *not* do. Don’t bury it. Don’t run from it and don’t cover it over. Just stay in the moment and feel it. Just feel it. Don’t bury. Don’t run. Don’t cover. […] Got the idea? Just stay put; don’t run. Just feel.”

That kind of rhetoric does nothing to help those of us who have stopped, have looked, and found nothing. “Just take a few deep breaths and feel whatever you’re feeling” is not only an unhelpful tautology, but it’s also thoroughly frustrating for someone who has no idea how to “feel what they’re feeling”.

Kundtz talks about this ability to notice one’s feelings and says “Without this first step, all else is doomed”, but then turns around and says, “It might also be true that at any given moment you may not be feeling anything very strongly”. Well, duh. I can’t say I’ve “felt anything strongly” in years!

The underlying, common assumption is that men are all actively suppressing their feelings, because everyone has feelings, don’t they? As someone who is reasonably mature and has actively tried to sense my own feelings and come up empty, I find that a decidedly hurtful way to dismiss my difficulties. I may indeed have emotions, but don’t accuse me of being dysfunctional simply because my emotions are not as overt as a woman’s. Defining women as normal and men as inherently abnormal is both prejudicial and hurtful.

Beyond that, as Kundtz himself is quick to point out, “Nothing’s Wrong is based on the strong conviction that there is a direct and causal relationship between violent behavior in males and their repressed (buried) feelings.” If that were true, one might well expect me to be a mass murderer, given my longstanding and lack of emotion, which can supposedly only be explained by active repression. But it hasn’t happened yet, so far as I know.

Anyways, leaving that particular issue aside for the mo’, let’s turn back to Kundtz’s three-step program to male emotional fitness: notice the feeling, name the feeling, and express the feeling. Assuming I find some way to get past step one—the real problem—there’s still this final step of manifesting the emotion.

The next question is *how*. Okay, I’m feeling happy, and maybe I can even recognize that; now how do I make a conscious choice between the myriad ways of depicting that emotion in my actions? Should I skip and jump? Should I whistle a tune? Should I go buy a drink for a cutie at the pub? How do I choose? And don’t you *dare* tell me something useless like “whatever you feel like doing”, or I’ll rip your throat out. It’s not that easy.

When he starts to talk about expressing one’s feelings, Kundtz cites a 1998 Newsweek article that reads, “when people regularly talk or even write about things that are upsetting to them, their immune systems perk up and they require less medical care”. Kundtz interprets this as “The talking or writing is the third step. It externalizes the feeling.”

That’s actually extremely good news for me, because I do a *lot* of written self-expression, as the length of this entry attests. The very first thing I turned to when my wife left me was email. Ironically, even today my real-world friends criticize me because they see more of what’s inside me by reading my blog than by talking on the phone or hanging out with me. Another funny bit is that Kundtz not only mentions writing, but also specifically calls out cycling, poker games, exercise, and meditation as other avenues for self-expression, and those are all things I do quite a lot of.

Another interesting bit is how thoroughly Kundtz disses isolation. He opens one section with a quote from Men’s Health magazine which reads, “Lack of social connection is ’the largest unexplored issue in men’s health’”. He follows with, “If there is only one change that you make as a result of reading this book, please make it this one. *Please!* Determine somehow, some way, at some time to regularly get together with friends.” I found that kinda interesting, considering I’m really the epitome of the isolated bachelor, and have recently been pondering how to reach out and craft a few new meaningful friendships.

I don’t want to give you the impression that I disliked the book. It was reasonably interesting, and successful at raising all kinds of topics for reflection. I just wish there was a little more depth to his analysis of how to detect one’s own emotions. “Just feel what you feel” isn’t helpful at all, although I’ll start watching my physiological responses to see if they provide any clues.

One last bit, which is something of a tangent. In addition to the Mary McDowell quote I’ve posted about already, Kundtz also cites the following quotation: “When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that’s my religion.”

I think that’s about the most eloquent statement of the Buddhist law of karma that I’ve ever heard. Satisfaction comes from taking moral actions, and immoral actions produce dissatisfaction. And I’m blown away that the speaker added “And that’s my religion” as a postscript. Can you guess who the quote was attributed to? I’ll give you a hint: he has a wretched hairdo and spends most of his time on $5 bills.

Imagine what might happen if we had a president today of a comparable ethical standard.