Nathaniel Sewell's Blog

Dearest Sister,

I tried to write you a Christmas poem,

But I failed time and time again,

My simple words wouldn’t mush together into a sensible rhyme,

Just harmless scrambled letters and thoughts staring back at me,

Once again, I tried to write you a Christmas poem,

But I failed again, and again, and again,

So I went for a swim within my unconscious mind,

I dove into clear darkness lured by my sanity slipstreaming a truth, 

And then ghostly harmony engulfed me to reveal what I already knew, 

And I harvested the simplest row of letters planted by farmer time,

And I mushed them back together, into meaningful words guided by the Devine,

Words that lack any rhyme, but express the greatest gift know to humankind, 

I love you, my dearest and only sister.

Merry Christmas.

RCH

When you share your username and password to check into your online bank account, have you ever noticed a box or oval shape next to the words, Remember Me?

I guess the creator wants to provide an easier access for the next time.

But, in the end, I think all we each want is to be remembered. Because there might not be a next time. Right?

I write these collections of words, knowing that social media allows me to keep tabs on my childhood friends. And the awareness some of my childhood friends will not have a next time, as they have passed over into another world that I cannot see. 

And then earlier this week, I saw an old photo from a social media page. They had colorized the photo to provide a more accurate image than the original black and white. 

The beautiful, but scruffy appearing girl was Jewish. The story showed they imprisoned her in Auschwitz. She is facing death. 

I did some basic research, and I found her. Warning – the photo is heartbreaking. 

(Link:) https://www.dw.com/en/auschwitz-color...

What struck me about her image?

The color applied to the black-and-white photo made her come alive in my eyes.

I now remember her. I will always remember her. 

For some odd reason, I went and found a definition for the word, photograph. 

“The word photograph was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on the Greek φῶς (phos), meaning “light,” and γραφή (graphê), meaning “drawing, writing,” together meaning “drawing with light.”[1] – Wikipedia (source)

Drawing with light?

An astronaut or the Hubble Spacecraft likely took the photo I shared with this post from the perspective of the Moon. The sunlight splashed across Earth had traveled 8 minutes and 20 seconds. 

In my mind, we exist in our present tense showered on a hot sunny day by light from the past tense. 

We all exist together on this orb spinning around the sun existing in deep, dark space. Within a universe vast beyond human comprehension. 

If you are a spiritual person like me, perhaps you believe every living thing has a purpose and a meaning.

Our planet and all living things are fragile, and a memory can disappear at the speed of light and then we can no longer see what we need to remember to see. 

RCH

Allow her to sing a song you’ve never heard,

Singing words with meaning, 

Her God given gift no longer obscured, 

As she bravely steps forward from a great forest, 

She begins to sing a naked truth,

After, just after, a baby’s breath after…

As if we had been standing together on a sandy shore listening to the constant tides, 

And from far away, a thunderclap sparks jagged electricity to pierce the nighttime fog,

The lightning bolt revealing for us the ocean’s frothing surf,

We remain stunned by her cadence,

By her rhythm, 

Her God given gift no longer obscured, 

And then, the sweet song’s nectar entices our living hearts to emerge,

The author wisely remaining hidden from anyone’s vision,

Understanding it’s all about her moment to tell a truth, 

But only, only, 

If the song may be shared,

Only, if only, she may bravely step forward from a dense forest,

If only, only, if, 

We may hear her,

So, walk along with me, my new dear friend,

Along our path it’s a chilly morning, with dew dripping off the tall trees’ leaves, 

We can see our breaths as we hike along an irregular brown trail,

But do you hear with me the sweet whip-poor-will song?

Do you hear the songbird hidden within this dense green forest?

We do not see it, we agree,

But do we agree that it’s nearby?

Singing a song only the whip-poor-will can share,

And now, dear friend, look around the forest, 

And tell me, what do you now see? 

Do you see the old growth scars revealed?

The rough bark shedding its sins,

Showing its ancient rings we had not seen?

Feel them, see them, 

And understand their wisdom to stand sentinels to the past, present, and imperfect future, 

And we learn to be kind, 

One to the other,

And then, will you hum the sacred tune with me?

As we stroll along with our destiny, 

And from within the forest,

Do you hear her?

She has begun to sing,

Oh the sweet song,

A rhythm, a poetic cadence, 

Harmonized by a master we cannot see, 

And like a magic elixir within our minds-eyes,

We hold hands strolling along our life’s journey,

And we are at peace with one to the other.

Robert C.

I always write something about my former mother-in-law on June 6th. I have a good reason.

Seventeen years ago, June 6th, she departed our collective existence into a spirit universe. 

If you doubt me, simply stop and close your eyes and think about someone or a pet that you loved unconditionally. 

Give yourself a second or two… wait for it… remember a fragrance? 

I remember my grandfather Sewell always balled up his paper napkin; I do the same thing. 

See? It’s like a conscious magic… 

So, this morning on June 6th, I stopped, I closed my eyes, and I remembered her. 

I remember her boisterous laugh. She had that classic, hoarse smoker’s laugh. 

I remember getting her bemused gaze after I pulled a never-in-trouble son-in-law canard. Son-in-laws live by other rules that sons or daughters and of course, husbands may not venture. 

I remember her hugging Murray, her obese Basset Hound that seemed unaware it was a canine and not a human child, as it did what a Basset Hound does. Yes, we all know this pet, don’t we?

But most of all, after all things, I remember she loved me. 

If someone loves you, you can feel it. 

I think that singular residue always remains for the picklocks of time to discover beyond the heavens. 

The residue is always there, fixed at the intersection of time and space traveling at the speed of light. You don’t need to catch it because it’s always with you – forever and a day within all perceived and misunderstood dimensions. 

I’ve shared her living image… it’s displayed quietly on one of my office shelves. It’s always within my eyesight. 

On the back of this book mark with her elementary school teacher photo at the top, it asks: 

How many books did you read?

My answer is, a bunch. 

But, ask yourself a simple question, ever wonder about your influence on another human being?

My answer.

Because of her influence on me, I’ve written 5 novels, countless short-stories and poems, and 2 feature length screenplays. 

Maybe someday, the right set of eyeballs will read something I have written and I’ll be, as the saying, “discovered”.

I’ll be happy either way. I wrote these next words thinking about her and my grandparents.

“Know this, we’ll not be in those graves. We’ll be beside you. In fact, our spirits will be beside you always…”

In loving memory,

Robert C. Hall (aka Nathaniel Sewell) (Wink)

I think art and science are always evolving and changing our perspectives as new things are being discovered every day. (If you question my point I recommend you go do an internet search for CRISPR-Cas 9 or the word, Mulitverse.)

If I am always learning something new my brain feeds off the energy – and I think the experiences influence me to seek a happier life.

I also think you have to feel pain and joy to fully understand your emotional journey. If you remain numb to the world, or, don’t listen and consider another point of view, I think you’re cheating yourself. (I learned those tricks as I got and hope to get – older.)

I’ve had many other humans tell me they enjoyed my novel, 5th&Hope. And I’ve had the same humans express to me that the story would be a great movie. (I didn’t take the movie idea seriously as it is a totally different art form and it takes a mountain of money to create the art form.)

Fast forward several years, I had friend call me from – as the phrase – from out of nowhere – to express that she really enjoyed 5th&Hope – and, it would be a great movie. Hmm?

At the same time period I happened to watch a documentary created by Henry Louis Gates – The Black Church. It’s well worth your time to watch it.

I will share this – it caused me to change my perspective from what I learned, and then it influenced me to change my art.

And I experienced the death of my own mother. (In 5th&Hope I rubbed out mom as a setup for the story.) And I also got quite sick from the ‘you know who’ and had some time to think about my life.

The first time I wrote a screenplay it was more of a ‘cut & paste’ journey. It was boring.

This time the experience was quite different – I became emotionally connected to the story. And I guess my inner ’do-gooder’ bloomed a bit. MAYBE some day you’ll get to experience what I mean.

I need the correct set of eyeballs to read this screenplay.

Keep trying new things because – you never know what might happen.

I thought it might be interesting to share the top cover and first page. And WGA registration certificate. I’ll eventually get a similar registration certificate back from the United States Copyright Office. And I’m using my legal name for all of this experience.

Wish me good luck?

RCH

For over a year, Covid-19 rained over me and all the living beings that populated planet earth. It was like having an invisible specter lording over our collective every waking moment. 

Being a good citizen, I stayed indoors, washed my hands, and made sure not to touch my face. If I roamed outside, I dutifully wore a mask and avoided crowds of other anxious humanoids. 

Side bar, you know life has changed forever when you realize you are price and durability shopping on Amazon.com for KN95 non-medical masks. I am now educated on the proper type mask to purchase and how to wear it. I suspect you are too.

Paranoia can be an amazing motivator. 

Funny thing about life, I almost got to the virus vaccination line. As the old phrase, almost only counts in throwing hand-grenades and horseshoes. 

But about three weeks ago, a close friend tested positive for Covid-19. Her panicky call came on Friday morning. 

At the time, I lacked any symptoms, and I have stayed in good health for a long time. I remained unconcerned and went about my Friday and Saturday with zero worries. 

And then she started deteriorating – her late Friday evening text messages were not good. She planned to hunker down for the duration and quarantine. I felt sorry for her. 

Sunday evening clicked along with my life clock and things were about to change for me too, radically. 

The virus arrived without warning or fanfare, and later I learned without mercy. 

Within minutes I went from feeling normal to a spiked temperature, dizzy, and the sensation that something gripped my body, as if a Mafia hitman had stuffed me inside a giant trash compactor. 

It squeezed the air out of my lungs with gurgling extra fluid in the back of my throat. It crushed my lower back and shoulder muscles into exhaustion. 

I warned my friends via smartphone text. I unlocked my front door in the event EMTs might need to to scoop me up and rush me over to the ER. 

I know what it feels like to know you are in a perilous position.

Having gotten quite sick in China with a 104 degree F fever. That event caused my body to steam my brain from the inside. If not treated, the gastrointestinal infection could have taken me into an eternally bright light. 

This virus was not gastrointestinal, it offered the unknown. It scared me. I felt exposed. 

Quarantine? It was an alien concept, quarantine? But that was now my plan, it seemed to be my only choice. 

Monday morning, my lungs burned from a hacking cough and the effort to clear my airway. I wrapped inside a blanket. I yearned for safety within the cocoon’s warmth.

A friend knocked on my door. She left a plastic bag full of HALLS or VICKS – I learned they are useless to help sooth my lungs.

The disease process had burrowed in. I felt it. 

My body was on fire and I could only rest leaned upwards to allow gravity to help me breathe quick breaths. I panted like a sick dog. 

I barely moved off my couch for over a week, only moving on all-fours over to a bathroom to allow my hacking cough to clear. All day, every day, I battled back and forth. 

I texted my sick friend or did a FaceTime to check in. Alive. We had proof of life moments. After all, we were in the same sickness bunker. Our other friends left powerless, and they remained on socially distanced flight patterns. 

One morning I awoke without a temperature. Healed? It was a post-flu, post-hangover like phase, I thought. 

Wrong. 

In the afternoon, my temperature spiked and all the symptoms returned as if a cruel trick to fool me into thinking the virus had left my body. It had not. Crawled over to my couch position where I shivered, hacked and moaned. I lacked energy.  This roller coaster ride repeated, again, and again.

Thankfully, my sister monitored me from afar, she had me order an ‘expectorant’ from AMAZON, and my kind acupuncturists gave me magic Chinese pills. The combination helped clear out my lungs. I kid you not, after a day or so taking the medicine, I breathed. It was not a clean breath, but it was a fuller breath. 

I remained still, quiet and helpless. But I regained my mental bearings and awareness. I started to move, to walk.

After two weeks, I felt alive and not dying. My body’s immune system had fought back. 

I am lucky, and I am thankful. 

Dancing with a Devil is not a recommended exercise.  I never want to dance with Covid-19 again.

The singular point that caused me to write this post.

I am reminded of one fact, life is fragile. 

NS

I wrote this poem for a friend who was feeling sad, and lonely. Life and work can create stress, and frustration as we all work for our survival. Her favorite flowers are Calla Lillies, so I took that fact and married it with Quantum Entanglement (Google it) and from my brain, voila.

If you are missing a friend, family member, I recommend sitting quietly and simply thinking about them, and only them. It’s like magic!

NS

I am fifty-five years old. 55. Double-nickels.

I wrote the number; I observed the number, and since then I have been musing about my life’s journey. It’s an odd sensation to accept my body has carried around my mind for 55 revolutions around the heliocentric center, better known as the Sun.

When I was a child, I thought that 55 years old equaled near death. “Sucks to be you, dude!”

With my mother’s death last December 2nd during her 83rd travel around the Sun, the experience has graced me with the time to muse, to reflect.

I made myself reflect. I made myself remember my childhood.

I accepted my experiences, my decisions. I felt the real emotional pain.

I don’t allow emotional pain to fester; I try to get it out of my mind and body.

But before I get rid of pain, I had to seek the source, and then I felt the pain, to heal the pain. It still lingers inside me, it will always linger, I simply refuse to let it intimidate me. 

I think my mother loved me in her own way, but toward the last part of her life we stopped communicating.

I didn’t understand her, and she didn’t understand me.

I used the first person pronoun, ‘I’, repeatedly; because this is my life journey as I think and feel.

Her death made me sad. 

It’s not my typical way to bore people with my grief. But then, I realized many other people have felt the same.

So I started writing again.

The one thing I noticed, the sadness has freed me to communicate through my writing in an unvarnished tone. You can lie to yourself in writing, speaking, or acting, but I don’t recommend it. 

Sitting here at 55 years of age, I think 83 seems a good number to kick off into the next dimension, until I might actually get closer to 83 years of age, and then hope for another healthy cycle around the Sun.

My old man has clicked beyond 85 oval shaped revolutions, so I think their union in early 1965 has gifted me with decent genetic instructions to exist for another 25 or 30 years, maybe more, maybe less. 

If I am lucky.

Mostly, I’ve been fairly lucky in life.

I am aging!

I like my paying gig. I have good friends and peeps at work-work.

I could have died at birth, at five, or at any moment until now. 

Self-distraction was and is an option, but I try to keep my hands lite on the steering wheel, moving at a moderate speed toward a shiny horizon while following a social distancing regime from other nearby humans. 

If you inspect the photo I’ve shared, you’ll see my daily walking path through which I vector passed the docked boats and in front of the salmon painted Vinoy Hotel. It’s seen a lot of history walk passed its fancy front doors from when construction ended in 1925.

Sometimes I take a right and walk along the dark blue water toward the new St. Pete Pier, formerly the million dollar pier, and then travel the same downtown city streets where Babe Ruth and Al Capone once roamed freely.

But most of the time I walk forward during Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall into Vinoy Park and meander toward the beach area at the top of the photo, North Shore Park. And then I traverse along brick streets into the neighborhood Old Northeast and eventually turn back toward home.

It’s my choice. I have free will. I can decide to exercise or not. (At another time, we can discuss what free will really means as a philosophical pretense.)

I rarely quote other living or dead humans because that makes my words unoriginal and not deeply personal. I prefer honesty and being personal.

If you are going to express an opinion, say it without reservation and accept the response, favorable or not.

Death is a last frontier. I don’t know what will happen after the black curtains fall over my eyes. I hope my mother was reborn into another happy universe we cannot see within our visual spectrum, mostly because I loved her, in my own way.

But in the meantime, I wonder.

If the United States dollar is no longer considered a ‘store of value’, are Jeff Bezos or Elon Much still the richest persons on planet earth? (We’ll ignore political tyrants or inherited kingdoms)

If my simplistic math skills are correct: 0 (worthless) X $190 billion = 0 (worthless). Right?

(I’ll avoid the cryptocurrency discussion for a time when I actually understand how cryptocurrency works, or the idea of owning hard assets, or being highly liquid with a nation state’s cash, or scooping up gold and silver and hiding it all in a deep hole in the backyard under an old oak tree covered in Spanish moss, marked by a granite monument with the inscription, “there goes the neighborhood”.)

As a society, we legal citizens of the United States of America do not seem particularly – united. Life is not a zero sum game.

In my humble opinion, we are at each other’s throats encouraged by major media sources that play to our preferred narratives. For them, it’s about making profit from advertising by fomenting discord amongst the pet population.

I do know millions of my fellow Americans are hurting.

As in not having food or shelter as Washington DC dithers while paid anarchists and rioters attack Portland or invade the US Capitol building. I wonder if Nero has gotten his fiddle out?

It seems to me we are all living under a Sword of Damocles moment in time.

I think my friend’s daughter swerved into summing up my feelings, “Dad, I just wish we could read about all his in a history book.”

Over the last 20 years, Post 9/11 – we again elected a president with a well-known last name who seemed to be a pleasant fellow who preferred military expeditions. And then a smart dude who got lost in the social justice Washington DC sausage grinder. Followed by a sub-human that lives in a fantasy land where he yearns for on-sale hot babes, yellow hair and a spray tan, and now followed by a lifelong politician who I’m not sure is aware what day it is. I pray for his good health. I don’t think he’ll do anything stupid, but he seems quite fragile.

And so, our government is being led by human beings born in the 1940s, well before the invention, TCP/IP.

Our computer screens and smart phones instantly communicate, but if the pandemic has taught me any lesson, it’s that we as a society keep moving further apart into subsections while all the data is being stored in the Cloud.

I feel bad for anyone named, Karen. 

Cosmology might define our society as inflationary encouraged by dark energy. (I know that’s some fancy bull chips, but you get my point.)

I have no children; it was a conscious choice. But I worry for my young nephews and nieces. I worry for my friend’s children. All the media hype and histrionics, were and are not, helpful. 

What traumatic genetic scars will they carry forward into future generations from an earth stopping pandemic and closer to home a society that no longer communicates without the backdrop of potential violence?

Federal, state and local governments that do not seem well prepared to share financial resources, create reasonable policies, or other for the common good while at the same time our bridges and streets crumble.

And it’s not about privacy. Protecting our genetic code, that information is freely available. We can now manipulate our genetic instructions to attempt to eradicate certain diseases or better, create a boy or a girl with certain preferred phenotypic traits.

People have invented algorithms that predict human behaviors. I wish those algorithms encouraged more hugs and expressions like; I love you or I am sorry.

I wish those algorithms helped encourage communication and understanding. I think those algorithms are societies genetic code.

But that’s just me musing as I walk about St. Pete.

It’s okay to disagree. At least we peacefully communicated our differences and agreed to disagree. 

Now, can you pass me the mashed potatoes?

I always loved my mother’s mashed potatoes, they were almost silk like and then topped with real brown gravy she had magically created from a hot cast-iron skillet. 

NS

My mother has made her self-guided, one-way journey crossing over the human rainbow bridge. 

I pray she gazed upward with curiosity at the rainbow’s full-color spectrum as she arrived at tranquility station.

If heaven exists in a parallel universe that we cannot see with our naked eyes that’s just over the horizon behind an inviting light, I hope she smiled and felt at home. 

I hope there are other beings nearby her that she recognizes, she feels, and they welcomed her presence for eternity. 

I hope she found her new residence at the perfect intersection for peace and happiness. 

I hope she discovered a forever Christmas morning.

Or, just maybe, she gets to be an innocent baby and start all over again?

None of us know the answer on our side of the existential light. 

Even so, as we all know and feel, death creates a finality. There will be no reunions or telephone conversations. Life happens in the present tense. 

I’m glad she’s no longer in any physical pain. 

The funeral, or what’s known these days as a celebration of life ceremony, will happen via the ZOOM platform. We are not a close bunch of humanoids, but even for us, it seems a rather cold method for a family ritual.

I’ll not write about my mother’s memory without expressing a few truths.

For a variety of reasons, our relationship remained strained and distant.

For decades, my mother endured domestic abuse and was repeatedly disrespected. Because of her, I have a soft spot for abuse victims. I have a soft spot for anyone trying to rebound from trauma. 

I get my creative spirit from my mother.

When I was a child, she made amazing wedding cakes. And she had a kind, childlike personality and for the most part an open book.

When I was a child I never went hungry.

I think those are the memories I’ll grasp and hold close. 

Mother, I loved you from afar.  Rest In Peace.

Your Son.