*Typing*

This was years ago, back when my grandfather smoked so many cigarettes he looked incomplete without one dangling from his mouth. He drove an old Dodge Dakota that just stunk of nicotine. I'd plop down on the bench seat of that truck and the air would suddenly smell like someone had spritzed the cabin with a generous dowsing of Pall Mall scented Frebreze (if there were such a thing).

Scared to death his habit would dirty the lungs of his grandson, he never smoked when I was in the car––and when he lit up outdoors, he'd shoo me away like he had come down with tuberculosis. "Don't follow my example", he'd shout across the driveway in-between pulls of tobacco, his potbelly hanging over his Levi's, his arms as strong as tire irons.

One day he nicked himself good and deep with a box-cutter and the blood came spilling out of him like it had banged against his veins all its life to be set free, a side-effect of all the nitrates he took after his four stents. "Don't follow my example", he said as he grabbed a roll of duct tape, rolled it around his finger until there was no more finger and got right back to work. He'd rather work himself to death than turn and face the pain.

But, death hasn't come. The cigarettes haven't done it. The heart-attack hasn't done it. The stroke hasn't done it. He's impossible to kill. He's one of those men that will have to choose to die. Several months back, I visited him in his little house in Indiana and I found him sitting on a 5 gallon bucket, washing the rocks in his landscaping. Who the fuck washes the rocks in their landscaping? I adore him.

When life bares its teeth, close your eyes and transport yourself to the English countryside. To get to it, you’ve got to travel a long, snaking road that weaves through a series of towns each more beautiful than the last. The moment you've had the chance to fall in love with one, it's already a whimsical shrinking heap in the rear-view mirror. After two or three more of these cobblestone heartbreaks, you arrive at this cottage where out back on the patio sits a large wooden bathtub. You spin the faucet until steam kicks into the air like a smoldering chimney. You plug up the drain. Then, you turn your attention to this magnificent sea of muted green that travels as far as the eye can see. You stand there and you tell yourself that nothing else is real save for the patio, the English countryside and the bathtub behind you. Once the tub risks overflowing, you strip down and then plunge in. You hold your breath. You feel the hot water warm you from the inside out. You reemerge, you light a cigarette and you enjoy a smoke. You wait for the wolves to tire themselves out.

On the days you don't know what to say, it's perfectly okay to say nothing at all.

I don't bake a lot of cakes. But, cakes aren't something you should "wing". When baking a cake, you find a recipe and then you follow that recipe precisely.

However, if you follow enough recipes, you will eventually develop a strong understanding of the fundamentals necessary for baking a good cake. This is called competency. You will become competent in baking cakes.

Friends, family and strangers will try the cakes you bake and they will say, "Damn, this is a pretty fucking good cake."

It's around here where something extraordinary happens. You will suddenly be awarded the privilege to improvise, to imagine and to create as you please.

Nobody awards you this privilege. You just wake up one day and feel called to create your own recipe.

Competency allows for creative freedom.

There's a reason aspiring artists cover other artists' songs. It's the same reason aspiring painters recreate other painters' works and aspiring novelists rewrite other novelists' books.

They're developing competency. They're developing the skills, fundamentals and confidence to improvise, imagine and create original work of their own.

Two days after D-Day a US soldier by the name of Jack Leroy Tueller found himself scared and lonely.

Despite his commanding officer's warning of a German sniper in the area, Jack got out his trumpet and started to play. Thinking the soldier was likely as lonely and as scared as he was, Jack decided to play him his love song.

The next morning, a Jeep came up the beach carrying German prisoners on their way to England. One of the prisoners kept asking in broken English, "Who played that trumpet last night?"

When Jack motioned it was him the German soldier said, "When you played that song, I thought of my fiancé and I couldn't fire."

Jack then shook the hand of the enemy.