So. Yeah.

Then I disappeared. No more blog, no more music, no more Skullduggery. Definitely no staying current on email, either my personal account or through Facebook (which I haven’t looked at in months). Hardly any online activity at all.

What happened? I could say I bit off more than I could chew, but things being the way they’ve been, it’s probably more accurate to say I bit off more and I couldn’t chew at all. The past few months have been harrowing and stressful and lonely. So hey, good times.

I’m hopefully back for a while, and have things I want to talk about, and some things I really don’t. I’l be making a gradual assault on my email backlog, but if you’re in it, I can’t make any promises I’ll be able to reply. I will try to hit the important things, as out of date as they may be.

And here’s a Song of the Week, to reflect my broken brain and its place in the world…

This is a song that I’ve listened to hundreds of times over the years and it has never lost its power to move me. Aside from the elegant softness of the music and the gentle beauty of Miller’s voice, the song is like a shelter from the cold, a loving touch on a lonely night.

I suffer from depression, and just listening to Miller sing this song adds a bit of hope to my time in the abyss. This winter has been a time of crushing solitude and torpor for me (it’s become apparent that my depression is very cyclical, and the colder months damn near crack my bones spiritually), and I’m only just starting not only to see sunlight again, but to care whether I see it or not.

Julie Miller’s song helps me feel like perhaps there’s still someplace I’m headed besides base survival.

Lyrics after the break:

You’ve been taken by the wind
You have known the kiss of sorrow
Doors that would not take you in
Outcast and a stranger

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you’ll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

You have drunk a bitter wine
With none to be your comfort
You who once were left behind
Will be welcome at love’s table

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you’ll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

All the nights that joy has slept
Will awake to days of laughter
Gone the tears that you have wept
You’ll dance in freedom ever after

You have come by way of sorrow
You have come by way of tears
But you’ll reach your destiny
Meant to find you all these years
Meant to find you all these years

Everyone always just referred to him by his last name, in classic tough guy style, and my dad was definitely a tough guy. Yet he was no thug, no bully, but a protector of those that needed protecting. A warrior, as defined by ninja Shihan Jack Hoban is “a man of action, guided by reason, and motivated by love,” and that was my father through and through.

My last name is Byrd. But that wasn’t my father’s last name. His was Spenser. And if you needed help, he was for hire.

Spenser wasn’t my real father, alas. He wasn’t even actually real. He was a character in thirty-nine novels by Boston novelist Robert B. Parker, who died of a heart attack while writing the morning of January 18th, 2010. He was 77.

So why do I claim Spenser as my dad?

One of the most important things my actual father ever said to me was, “You’re a turd, a little turd, this big.” Then he rolled the tips of his thumb and index finger together the way a five year old might make a booger disappear.

So, as you might imagine, I sort of had to look elsewhere for any positive sort of mentoring.

Being a reader helped me see out of the dark pit that was my childhood world, and in books (and movies) I found that mentoring. I knew I didn’t want to grow up to be like my father, but what did I want to grow up to be like?

Robin Hood. Conan. Doc Savage. Indiana Jones. Batman. The Gray Mouser. Like many folks I saw in such characters things to aspire to, things I hoped to be. And I needed that positive modeling possibly a lot more than most.

In my early twenties, I read the book Looking For Rachel Wallace, and my life was literally changed. It was a taut, smart, enjoyable read, yes, but beyond that, Spenser resonated with me in a way no character ever had. He was big and strong and smart like most private detectives (at least in fiction), but there was far more to the guy than just bullets and beer.

Spenser could knock some mook’s teeth out, wryly quote Yeats, then head home to cook a tasty meal. He was bound to his own solid and largely inflexible code of honor, but practical in dealing with problems, even when they proved challenging to his code (which was often). He was trying to be a perfect Spenser in a very imperfect world, but he knew the world was broken and he couldn’t fix it. But he also knew that the very effort to do what he could was elevating.

In the above mentioned book, Spenser is hired to bodyguard Rachel Wallace, a lesbian feminist author who’s getting death threats from the sort of folks who hate lesbian feminist authors. (You know the type, they’re still all over the place, sputtering hatred because that’s What Would Jesus Do). Rachel is on the abrasively militant side, and there is instant conflict between her and Spenser because he is a big man with big muscles, a gun, and a manly code of chivalry hired to protect her, a strong-willed and liberated woman.

“You don’t like me.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t,” she said.

“It’s irrelevant,” I said.

“You don’t like me, and you don’t like what I stand for.”

“What is it you stand for?” I said.

“The right of every woman to be what she will be. To shape her life in conformity to her own impulse, not to bend her will to the whims of men.”

I said, “Wow.”

“Do you realize I bear my father’s name?”

“I didn’t know that,” I said.

“I had no choice,” she said. “It was assigned me.”

“That’s true of me, too,” I said.

She looked at me.

“It was assigned me. Spenser. I had no choice. I couldn’t say I’d rather be named Spade. Samuel Spade. That would have been a terrific name, but no. I had to get a name like an English poet. You know what Spenser wrote?”

“The Faerie Queen?”

“Yeah. So what are you bitching about?”…

“It’s not the same,” she said.

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because I’m a woman and was given a man’s name.”

“Whatever name would have been given without your consent. Your mother’s, your father’s, and if you’d taken your mother’s name, wouldn’t that merely have been your grandfather’s?”

Spenser was also an ever-entertaining smartass, which is one of my favorite character traits.

Spenser was the perfect literary mentor for me. He exemplified many of the traits and values I intrinsically possess, but he took them to a more realized level, and he codified them, made them a personal system. In reading the books, and looking at things through his eyes, I found a roadmap to living as I actually wanted to, but hadn’t really parsed yet.

In other words, I had notions, but no philosophy. Spenser, and of course the man who created him, helped me nail down the patterns of my own worldview.

This wasn’t entirely beneficial. One of Spenser’s strongest traits is an adamant romanticism born out of the classical troubadour spirit of romantic love. Once he has given his heart, as he does to his beloved Susan Silverman, that’s all folks, it’s given forever. Even if the love is not returned. Even if the beloved is gone from his life. I love you because of who you are, not because of how you feel about me or treat me. I have decided that it is you I love, and I’ll stand by that decision.

Very appealing, and I still largely tend toward a very practical, grounded romanticism regarding love. I believe in poetry. I believe in two people treating love as a form of art, spinning relationship as a weave of meaning and actions in a knowing, non-sentimentalist way that may sometimes use the cliches of romantic fantasy but recognizing that that stuff is just spice, never to be mistaken for love itself.

But that whole “forever” issue…well, it worked for Parker. The love of his life was his wife Joan, and he was unwavering in that love. There were even a few years of turmoil, and she left him, but he stood fast and she returned, and it was to her that every one of his books was dedicated, and it was her who ultimately found him dead at his typewriter. He stood by his decision that he was hers, whether she was his or not, and it worked out.

Me, I embraced that notion, and I put a helluva lot of thought and feeling into it, and it led me to fully dedicate myself to someone, even after she was gone (back to her husband and three daughters), so much that her lingering occupancy in my heart crippled many another relationship I had for years thereafter. Then I let her go, and allowed myself to fall in love fully again, and that eternal beloved hit the road when my life hit a hard stretch, but fortunately I’d become more realistic in this love stuff by that point.

Then I gave up on romance and got married, but that’s another story.

So, the worldview Parker gave Spenser isn’t perfect, but then again he knew that, and even Spenser and his other heroes know that. (About the character Jennifer Grayle, the elevated beloved figure in Parker’s non-Spenser novel Love and Glory, Parker once said, “Jennifer’s too thin, too small, insufficiently interesting and she does not bear the weight of Boone’s obsession.”) But they keep trying to reach the unattainable, and in doing so, they hopefully elevate themselves, if only occasionally.

At the very least, I hope to do likewise.

I’m going to miss Robert Parker. I did get to hang out with him many years ago at a book signing, and had a great time, but then, we were both literate smartasses. That always helps.

And I’m going to miss my literary dad, Spenser, though I have several bookshelves of memories at hand (as well as an enjoyable, if very imperfect, TV show) I can thankfully revisit any time I want.

Like right now.

Robert B. Parker 1932-2010

There was a time when I was in the wilderness two or three weekends a month, either on private backpacking jaunts or guiding groups for Georgia State University. Unfortunately, once my ex and I had our son, the trips mostly stopped. We did take him on a few car camping trips when he was very young, and every year he asked us to take him again, but things would happen to keep us from doing so.

Last year, I was determined to make it up to him. For his birthday in April, I gave him a great Mountainsmith pack, then when summer came, I spent way more money than intended adding and upgrading gear for our trip.

And we actually went, spending several days in the rugged Cohutta Wilderness. It was a fantastic trip, which we both fully enjoyed, and we even had an interesting encounter with a large timber rattlesnake that really wanted to hide under our tent to get away from us.

So now it’s going to be a tradition. Every year, I’ll take him on a backpacking trip at least once, just the two of us.

My ex and I started a new tradition last year. Every Christmas, we’re both giving our son some of the music we were listening to the year we were his current age. He’s thirteen now, so she gave him music from 1965 and I gave him music from 1977, the respective years we were thirteen.

I gave him Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and ELO’s A New World Record. I also put together a two CD package of assorted hits I liked that year, which allowed me to revisit the year I really started getting into music in the first place and rediscover just how many great songs came out then.

Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to “pre-optimization” of computers, it’s difficult — sometimes impossible — to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer’s advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three “optimized” computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model.

So keep this in mind if you buy anything at Best Buy. The full article is here.

Time is the currency of relationship, but interest only accrues if you spend it.

If you know someone who suffers from depression, you should watch it too.

The video is a lecture by Dr. Robert Sapolsky, a brilliant biologist (of the neuroendocrinologist sort) at Stanford. It’s less than an hour in length, and Sapolsky is a very engaging speaker who makes complicated topics very easy to understand.

I’ve suffered from depression for most of my life, been in therapy, read a book on it here and there….and in less than sixty minutes, Sapolsky gave me a much clearer vision of exactly what the hell is going on in my mind and soul. It’s enlightening, and somewhat terrifying.

I was particularly taken with his explanation about how nature (genetics) and nurture (trauma) can interact and literally change the way the brain functions. I already knew that emotional events could have lasting neurological effects, but now I understand how that probably happens. He explains very clearly how, say, a miserable childhood and possession of a certain gene can do crushing damage not just to a person’s psyche but to their brain chemistry. (Which reminds me of the Andrew Vachs column on emotional abuse I blogged about here).

You should watch.

For now, I just read a column that hit very close to home. It’s by Andrew Vachss, a mystery novelist and lawyer who is also a relentless advocate for abused children.

I’m a lawyer with an unusual specialty. My clients are all children—damaged, hurting children who have been sexually assaulted, physically abused, starved, ignored, abandoned and every other lousy thing one human can do to another. People who know what I do always ask: “What is the worst case you ever handled?” When you’re in a business where a baby who dies early may be the luckiest child in the family, there’s no easy answer. But I have thought about it—I think about it every day. My answer is that, of all the many forms of child abuse, emotional abuse may be the cruelest and longest-lasting of all…

The whole thing is here.

Four-year-old Paige Bennethum really, really didn’t want her daddy to go to Iraq.

So much so, that when Army Reservist Staff Sgt. Brett Bennethum lined up in formation at his deployment this July, she couldn’t let go.

No one had the heart to pull her away.

I don’t believe in hell. But I sometimes find myself hoping it exists so that George W. Bush can fucking roast for all the children in the world who are growing up without their parents because of him.