books – Frank is Emptiness

Lion’s Tooth

December 17th, 2025

I went with my grandson, Asher, on Saturday to get him a birthday present. He turned five recently. One of my friends, Ken, gave Asher a gift card for a local bookstore called Lion’s Tooth. I had never been in there before. The place is tucked into an old house on Kinnickinnic Avenue in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee. Asher and I found parking on the street and hurried into the store to get out of the arctic temperatures and wind.

Once in the shop, I marveled at how small the place was. The entire store is about twice the size of my living room and just as cluttered. I talked with the lady running the store while Asher searched for something to buy. Ken had thought that Asher could get himself a book. That isn’t what happened. Asher managed to find a selection of wooden pull back toys that caught his fancy. There were three fruits on wheels that he decided to purchase: a watermelon, a banana, and an avocado. Once we bought those, Asher wanted to go home to play with them. I would have stayed to explore the Lion’s Tooth, but Asher was in a hurry to try out his new vehicles.

Yesterday I returned to the bookstore. I had time on my hands, and I wanted to check the place out again. The shop was empty except for a young man sitting behind the counter. It’s actually a counter/bar. They sell beer in the store. I pulled up a stool and sat down to talk with guy. He sold me a beverage.

One might ask, “Why do they have a bar?”

My immediate answer is, “Why not?” Years ago, I was in a bookstore with my wife in Seattle that served beer and wine. My thinking is that once a customer has had a beer, he or she might decide to spend a bit more money in the store than they would have if they were stone cold sober. In any case, it makes the experience more congenial.

It should also be noted that this particular store is in Wisconsin, a state where drinking is considered to be a hobby. Many of the indie coffee shops in town double as taverns. It is not hard to get a drink in our part of the world.

I sat with Moritz and talked for a while. I wanted to know more about the store because it seems unique, even among other independent bookstores. Moritz and I had a wide-ranging conversation about all sorts of things: German history (his dad is from Germany and so is my wife), Kafka, Joseph Campbell, C.G Jung, Hunter S. Thompson, punk music, graphic novels, etc. I love those kinds of discussions. I enjoy freewheeling talks that only occasional touch on the business as hand, which in this case was his store.

As the website for the Lion’s Tooth indicates, the store got an award for being the best comic bookstore in town. The proprietors mention, “We had no hope of ever getting a Best of Milwaukee plaque because we don’t really fit any of the categories.” This is true. They don’t. Not at all. That is what makes the shop attractive to me.

This tiny shop does not make a lot of money. I don’t think that they actually want to make a huge profit. They just want to provide a unique experience to a small subculture of people. Their target market is primarily the population that likes to read books. As time goes on, that demographic diminishes. Within this group is a subset of people who want to something weird. As far as I can tell, that is the store’s customer base. A person who walks into Lion’s Tooth is looking for a comic, or book, or graphic novel that makes them want to say, “What the fuck is this about?” Fortunately, the shelves are filled with exactly that sort of product.

I asked Moritz what kind of books they sell. His answer was,

“We sell what we like.”

That is a refreshing comment. Moritz told me how he loves to open the boxes of new shipments because he is excited about reading the comics or books himself. The books and zines they offer are obscure titles created by obscure authors and artists, many of them local. It is doubtful that a customer will find some of these publications anywhere else. The subject matter ranges wildly: LGBTQ stories, social justice commentary, books on racism, reports on the war in Gaza. As an example, while I was there, a customer came in to pick up a book he had ordered about Joe Hill, the labor organizer with the IWW. A person browsing the stacks takes a small risk when purchasing a book or a zine. The material might be absolutely brilliant or total dreck, or both. Buy the ticket and take the ride, like Hunter S. Thompson used to say.

They have several book clubs at the store: comix, music, nonfiction, and wine. If I wasn’t busy with my grandson, I would try out one of those clubs. They also have an artist in residency program. Moritz was involved with that. The store is active with the local community.

In short, Lion’s Tooth is the anti-Barnes and Noble. I find hard to imagine a place less corporate. I hope they stay open. I hope they stay strange.

How Did We Get So Old?

August 12th, 2025

Karin and I celebrated our wedding anniversary yesterday. Forty-one years. It seems like an impossibly long time. Of course, we know elderly couples that have been married for sixty years or more. We also know people who didn’t even make it through a year of marriage. And we know couples who don’t bother with marriage at all. I don’t understand why some couples stay married and others don’t. I certainly don’t why Karin and I are still together. Is it karma, love, or dumb luck? Or is it a combination of all those factors?

I suspect that a reason that a couple might stay together is because they have an intense, almost irrational level of commitment to each other. The “until death do us part” part of wedding vows is actually taken seriously. In many cases, marriage is seen as a contract between two parties. The relationship is purely transactional. It can be broken one party fails to comply with its obligations. A marriage can also be viewed as a covenant, as an unbreakable agreement where both individuals promise to stick withe the other regardless of what happens. In some situations, like spousal abuse or addiction, even a covenant can be broken, but the commitment is there at the beginning and the two members of the marriage do their best to make it work. That involves struggle and sacrifice, and sometimes love and joy. It is a vocation, a lifelong process. In a sense, two people really can become one.

Karin and I went out to eat yesterday. Our grandson, Asher, visited his mama for two hours, so Karin and I could be a couple while he was with her. Asher is constantly with us, since we are his fulltime caregivers. Maybe two or three times a year, we are Asher-free and we can do adult activities without a four-year-old tagging along. It just happened that one of these events occurred yesterday on our anniversary. We made the most of the opportunity.

We went to Cozumel, a Mexican restaurant that has outdoor seating on a balcony that sits high above the banks of the Milwaukee River. Karin ordered a potato fajita and I got choriqueso, an appetizer thar consists of chorizo and queso with a smattering of onions and peppers. It is basically a bowl of spicy cholesterol, but it tasted good with tortilla chips. Karin had a raspberry margarita and I had a cold mug of Negra Modelo.

We talked while we ate. We reminisced about our wedding in her home village in Germany four decades ago. Some of that is hard to recall. We have memories of memories at this point. Karin wanted to know what we had for dessert at the reception. I had no idea. Germans don’t do massive wedding cakes like Americans do. Actually, they prefer to have a plethora of smaller cakes. I remember her parents’ house being packed with kuchen from friends and neighbors.

Oddly enough, I do remember the wine we had. It was local vintage from Karin’s region of Germany. We toasted with a Marklsheimer Propstberg, a fruity white wine produced in the little town where we had our reception. It’s odd what things I can recall and what things I have completely forgotten.

Karin looked up from her meal and asked me,

“How did we get so old?”

I shrugged and said, “Lots of practice.”

She gave me a smirk. Then she said, “I’m seventy already.”

Yeah, she is. I’m sixty-seven. Most of our lives are in the rear view mirror. We’ve already done many things and made most of our decisions. Now, we are busy raising a little boy. This is our vocation, our calling. It may be the last one for us.

Karin didn’t finish her fajita. We asked the waiter for a box to take home. We were sitting at a tiny table at the edge of the balcony. I was trying to scoop the remains of the fajita into the box. I had a couple plates stacked up to make room. I nudge the plates and utensils as I filled the box.

“Fuck!” I said suddenly.

Karin asked me, “What is it?”

“A fork went over the edge of the balcony.”

She looked down and there, thirty feet below us, was a fork from our table.

We paid the bill and got ready to leave. I glanced at the waiter. I asked Karin,

“Should I tell him about the fork?”

She nodded.

I walked over to the waiter and tried to explain what had happened. He looked puzzled. I took him to the side of the balcony. I said,

“Look straight down.”

He did, and then he laughed.

“He told me, “Don’t worry. This happens all the time. Have a good night.”

I replied, “Gracias.”

He smiled, and said, “De Nada.”

We left to pick up Asher.

Are You from Here?

August 8th, 2025

We were at the playground with the big sandbox. Asher likes to go there. He has a plastic bin full of beach toys that he insists on taking to the park. There isn’t a beach, so he plays with his shovels and trucks in the sandbox. Sometimes other kids are there. Asher is a good sport about letting the other children use his things. Most of the time the other kids ask before they use his toys, especially if their caregivers are nearby. Sometimes, they don’t ask. Asher doesn’t seem to mind, and I don’t either.

After a while, Asher got tired of playing in the hot sand. Even though we arrived at the park early in the morning, it was still quite warm in the sunshine. He had a drink from a cold smoothie, and then he decided to go on the swings. A group of children had just come to the playground from the Salvation Army center down the street. The kids were part of some kind of summer youth program that the Salvation Army sponsors. There were a couple chaperons with the group. One of them was a Muslim woman. She wore a hijab and a long abaya that went down to her ankles. She sat down under the shade of an oak tree close to the playground.

A little girl came over to the swings and tried to make friends with Asher. He wasn’t interested. The girl was sturdy looking. She had a very round face and a page boy haircut. She was wearing a dress with lavender unicorns on it. Asher likes unicorns, and he likes lavender, but not so much this time. It should be noted that for reasons that are obscure to me Asher is a babe magnet. He has the uncanny ability to attract girls, usually older than himself. Admittedly, he has a winning smile and a dimple on his right cheek that can melt hearts. However, he wasn’t smiling at the girl. He just stared at her as she spoke to him nonstop.

Eventually, the girl moved away and climbed on to the monkey bars. She hung on them for a bit and then she asked me,

“Are you his grandpa?”

I nodded.

She asked, “Does he talk a different language? Or is he too young to talk?”

Little did the girl know that Asher can be a relentless chatterbox. His verbal skills are very strong. I know from experience that it is sometimes almost impossible to get the boy to shut up when he is on roll.

I told her that Asher didn’t speak to her because he’s a bit shy (that’s kind of a lie, but whatever). She asked,

“How old is he?”

“He’s four-and-a-half.”

She replied, “I’m six-and a half. It’s kind of like being halfway six and half seven. He’s half between four and five. We got that in common, I guess. Is he in school yet? I’m in first grade, almost in second grade. I can only hang on to two of the bars on the monkey bars, even though I’m six-and-a-half.”

Then she told me, “I don’t worry about falling off the monkey bars. I’m tough. I don’t cry if I get hurt.”

She showed me her ankle and said, “I scraped my foot here. It was bleeding a little, but that’s because I scratched at it, but it’s better now and I didn’t cry or anything.”

I forget what all else she said. She rambled on for a while. Then she went back on to the monkey bars and swung unsteadily from one bar to the next. The Muslim woman got up and shouted to the girl,

“Be careful! Don’t go so far! You’ll fall!”

Ah, the voice of a mom calling.

I turned to the woman and said, “You have a very brave girl!”

She looked at me and said, “But she must be more careful. She could get hurt.”

At that point, I said to her, “A salaam alaikum.”

She blinked for a second, then smiled and replied, “Wa alaikum asalaam.”

I told her, “I know a little Arabic.”

She asked me, “Where are you from?”

I looked around for moment and said, “I’m from here.”

I need to mention that I grew up in the local area, but I was far away for twelve years of my life. I almost never ask people where they are from anymore, especially if they have a foreign accent. In today’s political environment, with all of the fear and xenophobia, I am reluctant to pry into somebody’s history. My wife is from another country, and I lived overseas for three years. I know how it feels to be “from somewhere”.

I told her, “I studied Arabic in the Army, but I don’t remember much.” That’s true. I took Arabic for four years at West Point, but that was many years ago. I am not fluent in the language at all, but having studied Arabic makes me relatively comfortable with Arabs and other people who are Muslim. I helped tutor the children of a Syrian refugee family for several years. My extremely limited Arabic was helpful at times

I talked to the mom about Asher. She talked about her tomboy daughter. She told me that it must be hard for me and my wife to care for the boy. I replied,

“Sometimes it is, but Asher is also a blessing.” I fumbled for the Arabic word. I said, “He’s a baraka.”

The woman laughed. “Yes, exactly. He is a baraka.”

It was hot. The kids were wilting. The group from the Salvation Army lined up to go back to their building. The little girl went to her mother.

The mom waved to us and yelled, “It was good to meet you!”

Yes, it was.

A Hero of War

August 3rd, 2025

He said “Son, have you seen the world?
Well, what would you say if I said that you could?
“Just carry this gun, you’ll even get paid”
I said “That sounds pretty good”

Black leather boots
Spit-shined so bright
They cut off my hair but it looked alright
We marched and we sang
We all became friends
As we learned how to fight

A hero of war
Yeah, that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

I kicked in the door
I yelled my commands
The children, they cried
But I got my man
We took him away
A bag over his face
From his family and his friends

They took off his clothes
They pissed in his hands
I told them to stop
But then I joined in
We beat him with guns
And batons not just once
But again and again

A hero of war
Yeah that’s what I’ll be
And when I come home
They’ll be damn proud of me
I’ll carry this flag
To the grave if I must
‘Cause it’s a flag that I love
And a flag that I trust

She walked through bullets and haze
I asked her to stop
I begged her to stay
But she pressed on
So I lifted my gun
And I fired away

And the shells jumped through the smoke
And into the sand
That the blood now had soaked
She collapsed with a flag in her hand
A flag white as snow

A hero of war
Is that what they see
Just medals and scars
So damn proud of me
And I brought home that flag
Now it gathers dust
But it’s a flag that I love
It’s the only flag I trust

He said, “Son, have you seen the world?
Well what would you say, if I said that you could?”

Lyrics to Hero of War from the band, “Rise Against”. Released in 2008.

I just played that track again on the stereo after not listening to it for a long time. I don’t particularly like the song, even though it is well done. I guess it’s because it’s just too accurate and it cuts too close to the bone. Hearing it makes my heart hurt. It really does.

I can’t listen to the lyrics without thinking about my oldest son, Hans. Hans enlisted in the Army in 2009. He knew when he enlisted that he was going to be deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan. That was guaranteed. My wife and I did not want him to go to war, even though I am a veteran myself, or especially because I am a veteran. He joined anyway. Hans went to Iraq in 2011.

Hans did lots of things in Iraq. He went on patrols. He cleared buildings. He kicked in doors. He got wounded. He killed people. He came back different.

Hans texted a few weeks ago about his war. He said, “I’m actually grateful for my army experience.” He told me that it made him grow up in a hurry and it taught him what was important in life. I’m sure that’s true, but at what cost?

I’ve written numerous essays on this blog about Hans and things that happened to him in the Army. A few of his stories are funny, but most of them are not. The accounts of his experiences in Iraq are harrowing, at least they are to me. There are things that a father probably does not need to hear, although I am grateful that Hans trusted me enough to tell me.

If you’re curious, you can look up my essays about his war. It’s all here in the blog.

Hans was a hero of war, whatever that means.

Give Me Your Arm

July 29th, 2025

Our young grandson, Asher, is a restless sleeper. He’s only four-and-a-half years old, but he has already seen more than his fair share of trauma. He sleeps in my bed. I don’t necessarily want him with me, but he can’t go to sleep unless I hold him. When he is tired, Asher crawls into the bed and nestles in the crux of my left arm. It takes him only moments to doze off once he is comfortable there. He doesn’t want me to cuddle with him. He just wants to be held in my arm.

Lately, Asher has been waking up in the middle of the night. He likes to sleep crosswise in the bed, which means I have little or no room. Last night, around 3:00 AM, he woke up and looked at me. He said,

“Grandpa, give me your arm.”

I did.

He touched my arm and found his sweet spot on my bicep. Asher fluffed it up like a pillow. Then he rested his head on my arm. He grasped my arm with both hands and held on tight. Slowly, gradually, he relaxed. After a few minutes, he calmed down and his breathing grew quiet. Then he was asleep, still holding onto my arm.

I waited half an hour, and then I carefully wrested my arm from under his round head. Asher slept on. I got up to take a piss.

This morning, I took Asher to the playground early. We stayed there until it got too hot for him to play anymore. Then he wanted to go to the library.

We drove to the library. Asher drank a smoothie in the back seat. When we got close, Asher told me,

“I can see the library! We are almost there!”

I replied, “I know.”

“Grandpa, we are there. We can park the car.”

“Yeah.”

After I parked, Asher got out of his child seat and climbed out of the car.

He said, “Give me your arm.”

I said, “I have to lock the car.”

I did. Then we walked toward the entrance of the library.

Asher grasped my right hand. I squeezed his little hand in mine.

He told me, “I’m only holding on to your pinkie.”

I told him, “That’s good enough.”

Fat

July 27th, 2025

I try to take my grandson, Asher, to a playground every day. Sometimes the visit is brief. Sometimes we are at the park for an hour or two. The point is that he is a four-year-old boy, and he needs to be outside and active. He needs to be moving.

I read an article about Dr. Oz, the man currently in charge of Medicare and Medicaid. He recently went on a rant about the nation’s obesity epidemic. It is a bit hard for me to take Dr. Oz seriously considering that his boss in the White House is almost as wide as he is tall. However, Oz has a point. Americans are fatter than we were in years past. It’s a fact.

A couple days ago, I took Asher to a local playground near a Salvation Army center. The Salvation Army has ongoing summer youth programs. Asher and I were at the park when a column of kids and their chaperons walked from the center to the playground. There were probably twenty or thirty children coming toward us. They were of various ages, both boys and girls.

In that group I saw that about 25% of kids were overweight, a few of them morbidly obese. That really kind of bothered me. Once the children arrived at the playground, most of them went directly to the swings and the slides and the monkey bars. They started organizing games among themselves. They were loud and rambunctious. They were doing exactly what kids are supposed to do when they are outside. They were in constant motion and generally having a good time.

Most of the heavier kids did not participate in the horseplay. They found a place to sit or lie down. Asher played with a few other children in a big sandbox. They took turns excavating a buried toy. One overweight older boy helped, but he remained prone the entire time. He laid on his belly while digging in the sand with a small shovel. He didn’t even bother to sit up. When he was done playing, it took enormous effort for him to get back up on his feet.

I was a fat kid. In grade school I was chubby, so I know how it is to be an overweight child. My folks took me to the “husky” section for boys’ clothes at the department store. I often felt embarrassed about my weight. I usually was one of the last kids to get picked for a team in gym class. Life sucked. I know how the heavy kids at the playground feel.

Somehow, once I got into middle school and high school, I became more physically active and I “thinned out”. I was actually in good enough shape in my senior year to get accepted into the U.S. Military Academy. Honestly, I don’t know who or what helped me to get in shape, but I did change. Now, I’m old and I could stand to lose five to ten pounds. I probably won’t, but at this point in my life it might not matter so much.

I think obesity does matter for these children. They are going to have serious health problems in the future, if they don’t already. I don’t blame them for their condition. I’ve been there. They need their caregivers to help them get fit. They need adults to help them get moving.

Asher is fit. He’s strong and agile. I am going to help him to stay like that.

Inheritance

July 16th, 2025

“Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” – Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings

It’s 4:12 AM. I just looked outside. A half-moon sits high above us and casts a pale light on the backyard. The morning star hangs in the eastern sky like a bright jewel. The birds are starting wake up. Otherwise, it all quiet both inside the house and out.

Our little grandson, Asher, is asleep. He likes to lie crosswise in the bed. It is amazing to me how much room a four-year-old can take up. Asher is a restless sleeper. He rolls and moans and sometimes reaches out to me at night. One reason I got up so early was that the boy left me no room in the bed.

The other reason for starting my day while it still dark is that I keep thinking about what kind of world Asher, and our other three grandchildren, will inherit. The future does not look promising. Climate change, mass extinctions, xenophobia, endless wars, and the rise of authoritarianism in our country and around the world make me pessimistic. Asher may grow up and curse me and my generation. He would be right to do so. Asher has already faced intense trauma in his young life. He will grow up and have to contend with enormous challenges, but then perhaps every new generation has to do that.

What can I do for this boy? I’m not sure. Before Asher came into our lives, I was busy as an activist. I taught a citizenship class. I advocated for migrants. I visited veterans in the psych ward of the local VA hospital. I was arrested once at an anti-war demonstration. My wife and I delivered household items during the pandemic to people who could not get to a food pantry. I tried to “uproot the evil in the fields that we know”. I did that in clumsy, ignorant way, but I tried.

(I had to stop writing for a bit. Asher stirred and cried in bed, and I needed to lie next to him until he calmed down again. I will start again with this essay).

Now, I do none of that sort of thing. Asher has become my life. Raising him consumes my time and energy. I feed him. I dress him. I take him to a park or playground nearly every day. We go to libraries together. Sometimes, I read books to him. I dry his tears. My world has grown smaller and far more focused.

In the fall Asher will start kindergarten. He will go to a local Waldorf school. Why there? Because at this school he will be treated with respect. He will learn reverence for nature. He will be exposed to music and art. He will learn to use his hands as well as his head. He will make friends. He will be loved.

Each day I try to do what I can to give Asher and our other grandkids a fighting chance in their brave new world. I don’t understand this world, at least not well enough. I can only do so much. I can’t save Asher from suffering. I can’t protect him from his future.

“What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”

Monkey Bars and Morning Glories

July 11th, 2025

We tend to observe certain milestones in life: births, graduations, and weddings. Maybe, we might also commemorate baptisms or bar mitzvahs, if we are at all religious. But we tend to ignore the small events which by themselves seem inconsequential, but in fact are critical in a cumulative sort of way. These mundane achievements are seldom celebrated or even recognized. We don’t usually pay attention to them, and they get lost in the flow of time.

I have a four-year-old grandson named Asher. My wife and I are his legal guardians and fulltime caregivers. We are with him all day, every day. Sometimes, we don’t notice the changes in him. We ofttimes don’t become aware of how much he has grown until we see that his clothes are too small for him. Because Asher is with us all the time, we can’t always perceive his development. He seems like the same little boy until he shocks us with something new and unexpected.

When we suddenly wake up to the realization that Asher is different, we ask questions like, “When did you grow so tall?” or “Where did you learn that?”. It feels strange to get blindsided by his rapid development, but it happens all the time. We wake up in the morning and there is a new kid in the house.

Three days ago, I took Asher to a local playground called Kayla’s Place. There are many types of equipment at the playground for children of various ages to use and enjoy. Asher likes to swing on the “monkey bars”, which are actually a sort of horizontal ladder. I have always needed to lift him up in order for him to grab on to the metal bars. I had to continue to hold him each time so that he could swing from one bar to another.

Our last visit to the park was different. He stood underneath the lowest set of bars and made a little jump. For the first time ever, Asher was able to grasp two bars and hang from them for almost a minute. He isn’t strong enough yet to swing from one bar to the next, but he was able to get up there on his own. That’s a big deal. I congratulated him, and yesterday I mentioned to his therapist what he did. Asher was excited and told her,

“I got on the monkey bars, and I did it ALL BY MYSELF!”

A few weeks ago, Asher and my wife put up a sort of tepee in the yard to grow morning glories. Karin found some old stalks from the elderberry bushes and tied them together with string. She made a scaffolding for the vines to climb. Early yesterday morning, she saw the first flower blooming on a vine. It was near the ground. She alerted Asher that there was something new outside.

Asher put on his Crocs and rushed out of the patio door still wearing his pajamas. I followed him out. He stared at the morning glory blossom in awe. He told me,

“Grandpa, the flower looks like it’s glowing!”

It did look like it was emitting a light of its own. The rays of the sun were striking to flower in such a way that it was luminous. The flower was a deep violet on the edges and that color faded to white near the stem.

Asher smiled as he gazed at the blossom. For a moment he was in love with nature, and that was also a beautiful thing.

Monkey bars and morning glories. Those are simple things, but they are also important.

I need to pay attention.

Dragons

July 3rd, 2025

“There are dragons ahead!”

Thus proclaimed our grandson, Asher, at supper last night. His statement came completely out of the blue. Asher is four and a half years old, and he tends to say things that. He was calmly eating some French toast when he decided to mention dragons. I don’t know why. Maybe he didn’t either.

His comment made me think of the old medieval maps that were based partly on facts and mostly on wishful thinking. The cartographers of that time drew up charts describing the few areas of the world that they knew and then filled up the remaining blank spaces on the parchment by using their imaginations. A popular way of explaining the unknown was to write, “There be dragons”.

Perhaps these old mapmakers were right.

After Asher mentioned dragons my wife, Karin, talked about an old song from Peter, Paul, and Mary called “Puff, the Magic Dragon”. Karin tried to sing the song for Asher but couldn’t remember the lyrics. I could remember most of them, but I didn’t want to sing. Something caught in my throat when I recalled the last verse on Puff. The was a pang of intense sadness.

After supper, I tried to dig up a recording of the song. If I was at all competent with technology, I would have looked it up online. However, I don’t have a smart phone. I do have a sound system with an ancient turntable that I bought back in 1982. I also have a vinyl record from Peter, Paul, and Mary which has the song on it. I dug out the album, pulled the record from the jacket, and played Puff for Asher. Some old, well-used vinyl discs have that crackle and pop that is both endearing and infuriating. This record did. Asher listened to the music, although he was mostly fascinated by how the phonograph player worked.

The first two verses of the song are a story about a boy’s adventure and his fantasy. The child mentioned in the song is Little Jack Paper. The boy reminded a lot of Asher. I can easily imagine Asher having a dragon for a friend.

“Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
and brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff. Oh

Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee,
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honah Lee.

Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail
Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff’s gigantic tail,
Noble kings and princes would bow whene’er they came,
Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name. Oh!

The song makes me think of other dragon stories. Dragons are found in oral traditions and in dreams. Despite the fact that these are mythical creatures, they are universal parts of the human history. They do not fly around the skies, but somehow, they still exist.

Carl Sagan wrote a book about dragons, aptly titled The Dragons of Eden. He does not suggest that there were ever physical dragons, but in his study of human evolution, he says that dragons are part of our innermost being. He states that they slumber fitfully in the R-complex of the human brain, an extremely archaic part of the organ that contains “the aggressive and ritualistic reptilian component”. Anecdotally, Sagan asks, “Is it only an accident that the common human sounds commanding silence or attracting attention seem strangely imitative of the hissing of reptiles?” We don’t see the dragons in the material world. We find them in our dreams.

In The Power of Myth from Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, the two authors, discuss the topic of dragons. Moyers asks, “How do I slay the dragon in me?” Campbell replies by telling Moyers that slaying the dragon is about a person following his bliss and breaking down internal barriers. Campbell says, “The ultimate dragon is within you, it is your ego clamping you down.”

If the dragon is within each person, it is also part of the humanity as a whole. Campbell also says that “The myth is a public dream, and the dream is a private myth.” The serpent that hides in my subconscious is hissing within every person on earth.

Th last verse of the song is as follows:

“A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.

His head was bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,
Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.
Without his life-long friend, Puff could not be brave,
So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave. Oh!

This verse makes me want to weep. But for whom should I cry? For the little boy who must grow up? Or for the dragon who has forever lost a friend?

If the dragon is within us, can we ever leave it behind? Must we always try to slay it? Is it possible to befriend the dragon, fearsome as it may be?

Can my dragon be like Puff?

Fathers and Sons

June 28th, 2025

Conflicts between fathers and sons are inherent in the human experience. Myths from all times and all places tell stories of the struggles between the generations. The Bible, especially in the Book of Genesis, describes fraught relationships between the patriarchs and their children. These tales from various sources are uniformly disturbing and often violent.

They are also very real.

I’m old enough to know how these fights work out, or don’t work out. I’ve been in the role of the son and that of the father. Neither position is pleasant. As I look back, the power struggles were somehow inevitable. That doesn’t make them any less traumatic. It just means that I can accept the results of those episodes.

I had several intense confrontations with my father. They all ended inconclusively. Nothing was ever resolved. We would separate for a while and then make an uneasy truce. There was always a reside of resentment. The issues at the core of our fights were still there lurking in the background. My dad has been dead since 2018. We never really reconciled, not completely. Now we can’t.

In 2009 my oldest son, Hans, joined the Army. He did this knowing full well that my wife and I did not want him to be a soldier. I had been an Army officer in my youth, and I knew to a certain extent what Hans was doing. I also knew that he was going to war, guaranteed. If he joined the military, he would be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Hans knew that too and signed up anyway.

Hans’ decision hit me and my wife hard. I was upset for quite a while, and Hans and I did not communicate for several weeks. My wife and I traveled to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Hans’ graduation from basic training. I found that to be deeply troubling. Eventually, in 2011, Hans was deployed to Iraq. Most of the things I feared came to pass. Hans was wounded. Hans killed people (plural). He came back a very different person.

Hans became his own man. Doing that had its costs, both physically and emotionally, and maybe spiritually. Reestablishing a relationship with me also has had its costs. We are close again, but on very different terms.

A few years after Hans came back from his war, I sat with him and had a couple beers. I told him how hurt his mom and I were when he enlisted. Hans smiled at me and said,

“That was a pretty big fuck you, wasn’t it?”

Indeed, it was, but it was necessary for both of us.