Author: phoyle

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.” He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Singing, by Lewis

Everybody, it seems, loves music. Now that technology has made it possible to take one’s music with them wherever they go, ear buds have become ubiquitous and conversation passé. Throw in a smart phone and Twitter or text messaging and we may be approaching the end of the era wherein no man (or woman) is an island unto themself.

I have a photo taken of me when I was five-years-old, dressed head-to-foot in cowboy gear, playing 7” records on my portable 78-rpm record player. Even though I wasn’t reading yet, I knew every record’s title by heart. As an adult, it was my wont to make cassette recordings of all types of music, from opera to jazz, from borrowed sources, meticulously transcribing the titles, artists, and recording data onto the tiny cardboard inserts. I still have them—close to 900 of them—and, contrary to expectations back in their day, they still sound fine after nearly 30 years.

All this was prologue in that small boy’s head to a career in music. To be a singer in the tradition of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Vic Damone, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Vaughan Monroe, Marty Robbins, Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, and Perry Como was my fondest dream. Much later, I realized that it would be even cooler to be a songwriter who sang his own material. So, I turned my ears toward artists like Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell, The Beatles, and Don McLean.

To my extreme disappointment, as my voice matured and the guitar lessons became more demanding, I realized that I had not the talent to ever hope to find myself among the hall-of-fame singers of any genre—although I would have liked to have been in a blind audition with Bob Dylan in his early days. Instead, I would have to content myself with playing my three-necked, Hawaiian steel guitar for my great aunt—the one who was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution–at Christmas and for grade school kids at music recitals. (It was at one such recital that the other music students with whom I was on stage lost their places or backbone and dropped out one-by-one leaving me to finish the piece as a solo.)

As both a child and an adult, I have sung in church choirs but that is the limit of my public exposure. Recently, a persistent post nasal drip has caused my vocal chords to completely shut down after a couple of stanzas, putting a premature end to any illusions I may still have about bringing a crowd to its feet in ecstasy. I don’t even sing in the shower any more. (The vinyl curtain just doesn’t have the same effect as a glass one.) However, I still take great pleasure in hearing a beautiful tune sung well. Nothing else in the art world has as much effect on me. Visual arts can be stunning and beautiful but often need some background to give them meaning. Prose and poetry illuminate and entertain. But for me, nothing can inspire so much as poetry set to music. You can frame and hang a painting or tapestry and I can look at it and appreciate the talent behind it. But it doesn’t grab me by the heartstrings and wrap them around my throat. To combine the talents of a vocal artist with a brilliant writer of songs is to give flight to both art and audience.

7 April 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Nowhere, by Gillian

This is going to be very repetitive for some of you who have been part of this group for some time, but I’m not going to apologize for that. When you have shared little pieces of your life story almost every week for about three years, even at seventy-something there just isn’t enough life to go round and a little repetition is inevitable! And, for all that I have had some practice, I doubt that I shall be able to express this whole thing any more clearly this time around. As far as explaining it, I don’t even try.

So …. nowhere is pretty much where I was for the first 40-odd years of my life. I was living nowhere, going nowhere. You see, you have to be someone to be somewhere. And I was not.

Oh sure, I was a human body going about it’s business on this earth. But that’s all I was. I wasn’t real. The real me, my essence, my soul if you like, wasn’t with me. At least it wasn’t part of me: in me. For as far back as I can remember, maybe the age of about three or four, the real me hovered somewhere above or occasionally beside what I think of as the faux me. The real me simply watched. Observed. The faux me went on acting a part on the world wide stage, all the time knowing she was playing a part as the real me looked on. I thought perhaps everyone felt this way, though now I know better. In fact I have never once, since I have, only recently, started to try to describe all this, had anyone say to me,

“Oh yes, I know exactly what you mean! I felt the same way.”

Never.

The moment I came out to myself, at around forty, I literally felt the faux me and the real me merge. It was like an expertly guided boat bumping gently against the old worn wood of the dock. A softly whispered thunk, and my soul was safely home.

It has never left again.

I have no fear that it will.

I have, as I said, absolutely no explanation. It most certainly was not some schizophrenic kind of thing. I never felt like two people; just two separated parts of the same one. I never, rather to my regret, heard voices telling me what to do. I am actually rather resentful about that. Why did my soul sit silently like a lump on a log instead of offering a little guidance once in a while? I certainly could have used it. Or, giving her some benefit of the doubt, maybe she did. Without her I might still be in the closet. But if so, why didn’t she save me sooner? A case of, for everything there is a season, perhaps.

No, I never will understand it.

I never will be able to explain it.

I’m just so happy we are now united.

There’s a Country song, I’m Half Way to Nowhere.

“I’m half way to nowhere but it’s too late to turn back now.”

When I came out, I was half way from nowhere, and it was way too late to turn back.

And why would I?

I was finally whole.

I have finally found my way out of nowhere. I never intend to live there again.

© December 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Alas, Poor … , by Ricky

If someone else is reading this to the story telling group, then know I can’t be with you due to water leaking into my basement. Alas, it is the poor house for poor me.

When my spouse, Deborah, was a little girl of 4 or 5 years, she would frequently spend the night with her grandmother, Marie. Marie’s house was a small two-story home with two bedrooms up a narrow and steep stairs and with a front porch that had a swing. The indoor bathroom was on the ground floor. Deborah really loved the house and her grandmother. At night they would both sleep in the same bed under a thick layer of blankets and in the winter, quilts.

Marie was rather elderly and could not use the stairs without some degree of caution and did not like to go down to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Consequently, she had a ceramic chamber pot which she kept under the bed in case of need. In due time, Deborah noticed it and inquired as to why it was under the bed and what was its use. Naturally, Marie explained what it was and how it was used. Deborah began to help Marie safely negotiate the stairs in the morning to empty the chamber pot. Deborah was allowed to carry the pot back upstairs and return it to under the bed.

One fateful day the pot slipped out of Deborah’s hands and fell to the floor shattering into several pieces. When Marie came upstairs in response to the noise of the pot breaking, she found Deborah in a mild state of shock and fear. Marie knew how to take such accidental breakages in stride. She looked woefully at Deborah, who was barely able not to cry, and defused the situation by saying in a very sad voice, “Poor pot.” They both burst out laughing and “poor pot” became a private funny memory for them. If things were not going well, either one could say “poor pot” and immediately cheer up the other.

As for poor Yorick the slain court jester, I believe Shakespeare killed him — in the library — with the quill. Yorick probably told Will a “Rickyism” (a play on words) and was stabbed in the heart for his trouble.

© 15 June 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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My Favorite Role Model by Phillip E. Hoyle

For many years my gay life was lived in literature. I read story after story, book after book, seeking to discover just what a gay life might look like. I read to find out more about and build an understanding of the lives of my gay friends. I read to find myself somewhere in that literature.

There I found many disappointing characters. I don’t mean that I didn’t appreciate their stories, but what they did in their lives was not what I would choose to do were I living as a gay man. Still I wanted to understand and kept reading, sometimes re-reading, sometimes discussing what I found with a gay friend. In this exploration I found an alien world filled with people I didn’t especially want to be like. Early on I read works of Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopalian priest. I was impressed by his book of poetry Are You Running with Me Jesus? and realized he was open, perhaps homosexual. Then I read a book by Rev. Troy Perry who started the Metropolitan Community Church. I didn’t like his theology but did think he was doing something very important. I read about the lives of characters in Patricia Nell Warren’s many novels. Some of them were nice people but their experiences of life didn’t really lead me into a world I could easily identify with. I read autobiographical novels of Edmund White and Felice Picano. In these I felt a kind of kinship but still wasn’t interested to live their lives. I kept looking as I read Forster, Vidal, Baldwin, Renault, Isherwood, Puig, Holleran, Maupin, Kirkwood, Rechy, Monette, Kushner, and many more. I appreciated the writing and sometimes identified with a character up to a point, but I couldn’t place myself into their episodes.

It’s plausible that I was looking for a role model although I didn’t or perhaps couldn’t think in those terms. I read the lives of characters in gay novels and stories like I read the characters in stories by the Nigerian Chinua Achebe or the Brazilian George Amado or the Osage Indian William Matthews, as if their characters were from another world or even galaxy. But there was something more important that I did appreciate. I liked especially the scenes in which two men really liked one another, deeply desired one another, and shared their thoughts, feelings and even secrets. I loved when two men lay together in Leaves of Grass. That I could imagine.

In those days I wore a beard because I wanted to; now I wonder if I was somehow emulating Walt Whitman. I visited many people in hospital; was I still Whitman? I cannot answer that question very well. I don’t think so. But I did feel a strong connect with Bud in Ethan Mordden’s series Tales of Gay Manhattan. Often Bud observed his gay friends. Often he was befriending folk who came off the street. He was all around Manhattan and Fire Island with his friends telling their stories. Eventually he lived with a younger man somewhat at the insistence of his group of friends. He seemed surprised at how satisfying it was. Now that I did identify with, even wanted. I suspect at an emotional level, Bud was my bud, my gay role model even though our lives were mostly different. I have made many gay friends in ways similar to his friendships. Like him I have written about them. I have lived with younger and older men. I have built a successful gay life and consciously have connected it to both the character Bud and his creator Mordden. So I guess I have had two or three favorite role model even though I had difficulty naming one.

Denver, ©23 February 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Gifts from Afar, by Gillian

All through school it was the four of us. We took classes together, sat together on the bus to and from school and on field trips, ate lunch and played tennis together. Then, in our teens, circumstances began to separate us. Molly’s family needed her to go to work, so she left school at sixteen – perfectly legal in Britain then and now, and not looked on as something completely negative as it is here. The other three of us stayed on till eighteen, when Rose started working and Sarah and I went off to different universities. So in one sense there ended our togetherness; in another sense it did not. The four of us always got together for a picnic, or drinks at the pub, whenever Sarah and I were home for Xmas or summer vacation. Then, after we graduated, Sarah married and she and her husband emigrated to Australia. Shortly after that, I came to the U.S.

Now we were well and truly separated.

But we were not. Each of us continued faithfully to write nice long letters. It was always with great delight that I spotted a gift from afar in the form of an envelope with a Brit or Aussie stamp on it, lying in the basket beneath the mail slot, just as it now delights me to see one of their names languishing in my e-mail inbox. We remembered each other’s birthdays and faithfully sent Xmas cards, as we still do, although I have to admit they have become somewhat predictable. The two from Britain are almost always of those cute little English robins. The one from Australia is inevitably some summer-Santa scene, perhaps a surfing or sailing Santa, to remind those of us in the Northern Hemisphere that an Australian Xmas comes along at the height of summer. I saw Rose and Molly relatively often over the years as we got together whenever I returned home, but have only managed to see Sarah twice in the fifty years since we both left. Once in the seventies we managed to coordinate our trips home to see our parents, and in the eighties I visited her in Sydney.

The four of us have always been there, albeit long-distance, for each other through triumph and tragedy. I know I can rely on those gifts from afar, the heartfelt congratulations or sympathy, whatever happens, and they feel the same. It began when Rose, at eighteen, became pregnant. She was unmarried and her father threw her out of the house. The other three of us immediately rallied round. Pretty soon her father relented and welcomed her back, and although we liked to think our support for Rose made him relent, I doubt that it really carried any weight with him at all. Very few weeks later, as it was done in those days, Rose and the father of her baby married and have lived happily together, as far as the other three of us know, for over 50 years. They operate their farm in such an environmentally-friendly way that environmentalists from all over the world visit them. Recently they were honored for their efforts at a tea-party at Buckingham Palace. More cards and letters!

Molly married, but found that she could never have children. Cards and caring letters flew across the miles. Two years ago she had a mastectomy, and although she made light of it we sent the sympathy cards and encouraging letters.

I came out to my distant friends and was rewarded with loving, supportive, replies by return of mail. I had debated the importance of telling them, we shared so little, in fact nothing, of each other’s daily lives by then, but I felt that our close friendship deserved better; I was right. They have not had the chance to meet Betsy, but always include a cheery love to Betsy as they end their correspondence, and upon receipt of our wedding movie in 2013 the loving congratulations were immediate and sincere.

Poor Sarah and her husband have had the saddest stories to tell. They had two children, both boys. One fell down some steps in his teens and broke his neck. There was apparently a suspicion of substance abuse; he had always been a troubled kid. Then, a year ago, the older son died, in his forties, after a long struggle with leukemia. The cards and letters flew across the miles once more. I was dumbfounded by the strength of my grief. How could I feel so much for someone I had seen twice in the last fifty years? Fortunately for Sarah and Noel, their beloved son left them with two grandchildren and a daughter-in-law with whom they are very close. Life goes on.

I am invariably proud of my friends. Not proud of myself for choosing so wisely. The four of us were friends less from choice than as a result of geography. No, I am proud of them for who they are. In their strength and wisdom and caring, they never disappoint.

We have little in common, the four of us. You don’t have to have anything in common with people you’ve known all your life; you’ve got your whole life in common. Lionel Blue says,

“Old friends die on you, and they’re irreplaceable. You become dependent,” and I do so dread the day the first one of the four of us dies.

On being told that Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with old friends, Betty White quipped,

“.. At my age, if I wanted to keep in touch with old friends, I’d need a Ouija board”

Both Rose and Sarah have mothers still in good health well into their nineties, so I doubt, thankfully, that I will be the one left holding the board.

© May 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Forever, by Ricky

In this life nothing is forever. Possessions rust, tarnish, are lost, stolen, or permanently misplaced. Some things we own just simply wear out or become broken. Pets live their allotted time span, if they are lucky, and then die. People do the same. No one wants to think about or dwell on “death”, but we all will face it during our lifetime.

When I was a child of 2, my beloved pet dog, Bonnie, died from canine distemper. I was too young to comprehend “death” but I knew that she was no longer around.

At 13-years old, I discovered my neighbor from across the street, dead. I had not seen him for almost two weeks but his livingroom light was on all day and night. I went over to investigate. Looking in the cabin livingroom window I could see him locked in the attitude of trying to get out of bed. His door was unlocked and I opened it to be sure he was dead. His medium size pet dog met me at the door. The dog was emaciated. I stepped in and could smell the man was really dead. I noticed that the dog had drank all the water in the toilet bowl so I flushed it so he would have some more. I then ran home and called the sheriff’s office and then took the dog some food. I wanted to keep the dog at least until he was back in good condition, but the deputy insisted that the animal shelter would care for him.

Next to go was my mother’s dad while I was in the Air Force stationed in Florida. I took leave to attend his funeral in Minnesota. I hesitated to go into the viewing room so my 3-year-older-than-me uncle gently pushed me into the room. I had hesitated to decide if I really wanted my last memory of my grandfather to be this one. My uncle unwittingly made the choice for me. A few weeks thereafter, my mother wrote to tell me my pet dog, Peewee, died. I cried a little for her.

While working as a deputy sheriff in Pima County, Arizona, I had the occasion to discover three fatal traffic accidents. One killed a migrant worker when the vehicle he was riding in rolled over. He was thrown out and the car came to a stop on his head. The second accident involved an Air Force enlisted man, his wife, and newborn child. It happened on Christmas day and killed all three of them. No other vehicle was involved. The third accident was also a vehicle rollover. In this case, the two youths in the vehicle had been at a party involving some alcohol. Their high school classmates at the party reported later that the passenger had not been drinking, but the driver had. The driver survived the rollover and walked away uninjured. The passenger was thrown half-way out the passenger door at the time the door shut on his abdomen. These are three memories I wish I did not have, and they do periodically haunt me.

My mother passed a few years later from liver cancer. I arrived from Arizona to speak to her the afternoon prior to her passing that night. I took the early morning phone call from the hospital and woke my step-father to tell him. Then I went in to my sister’s bedroom where I could hear her crying and comforted her. After she calmed down I woke my brother and stayed with him for a while. He didn’t cry in front of me. I didn’t cry at all, but I did feel a loss. No one comforted me.

While in the Air Force for the second time, this time as an officer, my cat, Charlie, caught feline distemper. I made a “bed” for him near the furnace in the laundry room with a supply of water. I awoke during the wee hours of the night and felt that I should go check on him. He was breathing irregularly when I arrived in the laundry room and he looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes. I sat down and picked him up and held him and stroked his head and back. He died in my arms about three minutes later. I shed precious few tears for him.

Soon thereafter, my father’s mother passed away followed by my mother’s mother. More trips to Minnesota to attend funerals followed. Still no tears. Then the day I was dreading came. My father had gall bladder removal surgery which was successful, but his kidneys shut down and never restarted. He died two weeks after the surgery. Yet another trip to Minnesota followed. Still no tears, just holes left in my heart where everyone had been.

Then in September, 2001, my best friend and lover passed away from complications of breast cancer. Although my mental blockage of negative emotions had begun to break down back in 1981, it was mostly still in place, thus, I didn’t cry, but all the joy of life left me and I became an empty shell of the person I used to be, that person is not what I am like today.

Three years ago my brother that I comforted when our mother died, passed away from advanced prostate cancer. I had stayed with him for three months while he lingered. I had been notified of needing to appear for jury duty but was able to reschedule it once for two months into the future. When my time to appear was approaching, he was still alive but I had to return home. He died the day after I arrived home. I had no funds to return for his funeral and I was not needed for a jury. I could have stayed there after all.

As if to rub-my-nose in all this past death experiences, last Friday, July 10th, one patron of the establishment where I work had a heart attack and died. I evaluated his pulse by feeling his neck and listened for his heartbeat by placing my ear on his chest. His eyes were open, dilated, and unresponsive to light. He was also very clammy. Thus, another memory I did not desire but I am stuck with was born.

The emotional blockage in my mind is crumbling fast and I am now flooded with emotion whenever the latest tragic news story is told about death at the hands of evil people and Mother Nature. These stories cause me to actually cry real tears for people I never knew and for those whom I did know.

There really is a 12-year old boy, who never matured mentally or emotionally, who still lives inside my head. We are both tired of all the death we have experienced and the killings that bombard us in the news. We both remember the fear of nuclear attack from the duck-and-cover days of school drills and fear of the bomb was always present in the back recesses of our shared thoughts. I know how alone he feels now that all our “ancestors” have passed because he is me and I am him, but we are not integrated into one complete and whole person. We are tired and we want our mother and father to hold and comfort us and help us navigate the ever increasing chaos of our society. But they are gone. Where are peace and love now? Where can we find them?

© 13 July 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Extreme Sport, by Phillip Hoyle

This weekend while at a bar I saw an extreme sport on TV. Ice skaters raced at absurdly high speeds on a down-hill ice-covered course with sharp corners and jumps. “Absolutely foolish,” was my thought. I feel the same way about climbing high mountains, scaling rocks, deep sea diving, riding down white-water rivers in kayaks, on and on—all challenges of the hardy-body and hardly-wise from my scaredy-cat point of view.

Still, a realistic review of all sports-like extremes in my life sees me canoeing over a waterfall, but that was accidental, certainly not my intention, and I’ve already told that story. Such a review also sees me riding down a road on a snow mobile towards a big white-face bull, but I was not the driver, just a rider involved in that accident. The bull lowered its head and stopped us cold. I recall lying there in the snow unable to move thinking, “And now the bull is going to come over to trample and gore me.” I felt like a goner. I never expected that sport to become so extreme as to cause a number of trips to a physician and years of pain. But really my list of such extremities is short. I’ve already told these stories. I really don’t do anything extreme except sometimes entertain strange and extreme thoughts.

The things I have consistently done that are closest to extreme sports include some extreme reading and a few encounters with what seemed to me extreme piano pieces. For instance, in undergraduate school and in graduate seminary I read several New Testament books—the Gospels of Mark and John, and the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians. What made the readings extreme was that the text I read was in Greek! Fortunately I benefitted from the tutelage of fine professors of the language. In undergraduate school, on my own and without a teacher, I read in English Tolstoy’s War and Peace with its long Russian names and rather philosophical essays. I read the first volume in a month, took a month off, and then read the second volume. I recall almost none of the story and certainly not even one name except the author’s. You see, I don’t claim to be good at my extreme reading sport. I just engage in it.

Out of personal interest I read Victor Frankel’s classic Man’s Search for Meaning, the most difficult book I had read up to that time. I did not undertake practicing his logotherapy, not even on myself, but I do still recall one story he included and at least one general premise. More recently I read My Queer War by James Lord, a non-fiction account of Lord’s participation in the US Army during the European conquest. The story was not so challenging except in this reader’s ability to have faith in any military operation, but the main challenge was the author’s vocabulary, which led me to reread the book, list and look up all the difficult words I couldn’t readily define, and send the list to a friend who I knew would appreciate my making the list and why. I will mention that I have read books, many of them frankly, that have been a challenge in their stories, the scenes portrayed, and the values proffered, after all, I’ve been an avid reader of novels since I was in eighth grade and have read non-fiction endlessly, especially in anthropology, theology, music history, philosophy, sexology, and any number of specialized topics of my current interests. As a result I’ve stumbled through genetics while understanding only the barest of its meanings, philosophical abstractions that left me clueless, and logical conclusions that ran counter to my grasp of what the author had been saying all along. I’ve sometimes felt as if I were falling off a cliff, crashing into barriers, or caught in an avalanche. Oh well, I suppose I’m just being dramatic. Still, I remind myself of a couple of years in my thirties when I read at least five books a week, a practice that eventuated in my going on a book fast for a year.

During that year I attached myself to a piano teacher who liked my musicality and determined to teach me musicianship. Thus, using all my forsaken reading time to practice, I learned to play and memorized a number of extreme piano pieces, for instance, a Capriccio by Brahms, a prelude by Shostakovich, a short dance by Bartok, and several three-part inventions by Bach, and I played them in juries and music contests. Although I embarrassed myself in performance, I did love the challenges of the music. I also marveled at the real talent and technique of many accomplished pianists who, while they may have found the same pieces challenging, could actually play them in public with confidence and pride.

In short, for me extreme sports seem more based on their potential source of extreme embarrassment rather on my extreme coordination and ability. Thus while I have operated effectively within a limited field, I have risked only in order to participate in rather safe activities which have served to satisfy my almost missing need for adrenaline rushes. So while I accept that some folk may need to risk even their lives or to give everything in the development of a skill or to compete all their lives long, those conditions have had little appeal for me and have no real place in my life. I admire what it takes to do extreme sports, but at some very basic level I fail to relate to it. I don’t need to climb high mountains, don’t need to win in the race, don’t need somehow to be the best or to live on the edge of physical annihilation in order to be happy. Not me.

Denver, © 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.” 

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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The Facts, by Lewis

The late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is famously quoted for saying, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts”.

Thomas Jefferson has written, ““Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

It seems to me that there are two means by which people at various times arrive at an understanding of their world. One is to reason to a conclusion via the assimilation of all the facts that one can gather and so putting them together as to minimize dissonance. The other is to begin with the conclusion that one wishes to draw, whether in the service of faith or mere prejudice, and sifting and sorting through the facts, picking and choosing so as to not disturb the forgone conclusion.

If I were to paint with a broad enough brush, I could slather one political party with the hue of the former and the other party with the latter. I won’t tell you which is which because that would be to deny me the opportunity to put my theory of how people arrive at their understanding of the world to the test. But allow me, rather, to tell you why I feel that the fact-based means of rationalization is far the better one.

There are two kinds of truth. There is absolute truth and there is revealed truth. If we are to assume that truth matters, then it is important how one arrives at the truth. Our society is almost equally fond of both means. Congressional hearings, legal proceedings, the scientific method, and child-rearing are all based upon finding out what is true and workable and following that path. It requires setting aside preconceived notions of how things work in order to find the truth. If something is revealed which belies what I believed to be true yesterday, then I must reject my old conceptions and accept the new—at least, until it, too, is shown to be erroneous.

On the other hand, if I have been taught to believe that there are certain truths which are forever unchanging, eternal, unequivocal, then what do I do when presented with powerful evidence of their falsehood? I must either claim that the new evidence is a lie from someone who is not to be trusted; admit that I have been fooled for, lo, these many years, at the risk of losing face; or ignore the contrary evidence and hope that it goes away. This is, admittedly, a very uncomfortable position to be in. In part, I blame fundamentalist religion, in all its varied forms, for putting people in this predicament.

When you have been reared to believe that even to question “divine truth” is to risk eternal hellfire, it tends to put a damper on open-mindedness. The problem I have with these folk is when their mindset is brought to bear upon the political realm, which, at least in the United States, is constitutionally designed to be free from such influences.

All this said, I do not wish to give the impression that I am devoid of any tendency to eschew truths revealed through mystical events. Though I am a “non-believer”, in the traditional sense of that term, I have recently been starkly reminded that there are events in our lives that I have a great deal of trouble getting my mind around.

A few weeks after my husband, Laurin, died, the minister at my church, First Unitarian Society of Denver, gave a sermon on mysticism. It was about being open to the idea of things going on in the world around us that simply have no logical explanation and how that sensibility can make life easier to deal with, if not more interesting or joyful. That very night, I awoke around 2 AM, as I often did, needing to take relieve myself. Once back in bed, my mind, as it often did, began mulling over myriad things going on in my life. Still awake at 3:30, I realized that I needed to pee again. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and sat on the commode. From that vantage point, I can see my bed silhouetted against the east window. I noticed nothing peculiar. Upon returning to bed, I saw, lying on the bottom sheet where the covers had been thrown back, two facial tissues lying perfectly folded and flat, one slightly overlapping the other. They looked as if they had been carefully pressed, not as if I had lain on them during the night. I was certain that they were not there the previous morning when I made the bed. I had not been crying during the night nor had any other use for a tissue.

I spent the next two hours agonizing over how those tissues got there. I did not believe in life after death. I did not believe in ghosts or spirits. Yet, there was no “factual” explanation for what I had discovered. My sobs were so loud, I’m almost sure my neighbor must have heard them. It took Shari and Michelle from the SAGE Caregiver Support group to help me realize that what I witnessed might have been a sign from Laurin that, after so many years of my taking care of him, now it was his turn.

Even now, five months to the day after Laurin’s passing, I cannot write these words without breaking down. I now can admit, without flinching, that, yes, there are facts–and facts matter. But there are also phantoms and shadows that invite us to become their friends. Suddenly, the world has become a place of true wonder.

© 23 March 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Here and There, by Gillian

Here and There 

(Or, as my mum would have said, hither and thither!)

The American doughboys marched off cheerily to World War One singing, over there, over there, the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, and we won’t come back till it’s over, over there.

By the time it was over over there, 120,000 of them could not come back. Before long the Yanks were coming once more, for the second Big One, and by the time that one was over over there, almost half a million Americans could not come back. Over there can be deadly.

There was a saying in Britain at the end of World War Two. The only problem with the Yanks is, they’re over sexed, over paid, and over here. That seems almost incredibly unappreciative of men who, almost certainly, saved Britain from being invaded by Hitler and his Nazi thugs. It is understandable, though, that returning British men felt considerable resentment. Many returned to wives raising G.I. babies, or wives wanting a divorce because this poor embattled war weary Brit. could never measure up to that beautiful boy from Biloxi with his easy charm and an apparently endless supply of chocolate, American cigarets, and ready cash. They returned to girlfriends and fiancées who had their bags packed ready for an immediate escape to join that friendly fruit farmer in Florida, or some rugged Wyoming cowboy. There and here is not always an easy mix.

I, born in Britain in 1942, sometimes have to wonder what my life would have been, had the U.S. not joined the Allies in World War Two: different, for sure. Much shorter, perhaps. Having said that, it’s difficult for me to take the stand of an isolationist. But let’s face it, since World War Two, our military forays in foreign fields have not …. well, let’s be kind and simply say, not been all that we’d hoped for. Though exactly what we had hoped for, from Viet Nam to Iraq and Afghanistan, seems pitifully unclear. Over there can be confusing.

The United States, being an immigrant country, is peopled by those who, themselves or their not too distant ancestors, came from there to here – ‘there’ being just about anywhere in the world.

Some, tragically, came involuntarily, and experienced nothing good here. But for most of us who chose to come from over there to over here, it was a good move and we found the good life here, the life we wanted. People occasionally ask me if I would ever want to move back to England, and I surprise myself by thinking, not unless I can go back to the time of my youth there. I know that’s not an honest response, even silently in my own head. That was, after all, the Britain that I chose not to remain in. Nostalgia has been so aptly described as the longing for a place and time that never was. In my heart I know that if some magical time travel were possible, and I could return to the Britain of my youth, I would return happily to the here and now, saying, with that smugness we sometimes feel on returning home from vacation,

“Great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there!”

No, my life is here and now. I’m here to stay.

© May 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Preparation, by Will Stanton

The phrase “be prepared” reminds me of the Boy Scouts. Naturally, my having grown up in the 60s, I then can’t help but be reminded of song-writer Tom Lehrer’s satirical lines,

     Be prepared! That’s the Boy Scout’s marching song,
     Be prepared! As through life you march along.
     Be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well,
     Don’t write naughty words on walls, if you can’t spell.

I seem to have been focused on those songs well enough to remember them; but, unfortunately, I apparently did not have the focus to make all the necessary preparations for — thinking of a few examples — a truly successful career, financial security, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I seemed to have spent my time engaging in activities that, at the time, captured my fancy, usually things that had no practical purpose unless one planned to make a profession out of them. Yet, sometimes even those activities can prepare one for later use in a most unexpected manner.

When I was 17 (was I ever 17?), I found myself in Bozeman, Montana for the summer. I did the usual things, such as hiking, exploring, making friends. I even took a summer class in French, quelle qu’en soit la bonne qui a fait pour moi, whatever good that did for me.

What interested me most, however, was taking classes in judo from the Korean Sang Wu Shin. By the end of the summer, I had the basics well in hand. Of course, I could not identify any useful purpose in it. It just was something I wanted to do. I never had to use it for real self-defense, although it did come into play in an amusing way that following autumn.


Back in high school, I was heading down the hallway when someone ran up behind and trapped me from behind in a tight bear-hug. My response was instinctive and surprisingly effective. I took hold of his arms and quickly dropped my body down several inches to place my attacker’s center of gravity higher than mine and so I could spring upward. Then smoothly, I threw him up over my head in a large arc. I didn’t really feel threatened, and I didn’t wish to hurt anyone, so I set him down gently onto the floor in front of me. He wasn’t hurt, but he didn’t move for a while. He simply lay there with his eyes as big as saucers.

Once I got a look at who my attacker had been, I recognized him as a student one year behind me. He was pleasant looking, tall, slim, brown hair, and with glasses, hardly a threatening appearance. I didn’t really know him well and wondered why he chose to put me into a bear-hug. Of course at that age, I was even more dense than I am now, and it didn’t occur to me at the time that he simply wanted to touch me, to hug me. After all, most of us hid such feelings through sublimation – wrestling, teasing, depantsing, and pretend attacks.

After his experiencing such a big surprise being tossed to the floor in a judo-throw, there was no more interaction between us. So, I always have wondered, was his attack just a moment of goofiness? Or, did he really want to hug me? I had the preparation to be able to get out of a bear-hug, but apparently I wasn’t prepared to understand human nature.

A post-script: Another guy who witnessed the incident later told me, “I knew you play piano, so I thought you were a wuss. I’ve changed my mind.”

© 28 July 2015

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.