Twenty four years ago I wrote a short story called “Monitor Gray”, followed by “Jon’s Song” and “Sands” four years later. Now, after three months of dedicated work, we are just thirty six hours from shooting the most important scene in a ten minute short film treatment of the same name.

Monitor Gray is reborn.

To learn about the current production, to review the concept art and backstory, to learn about what was happening for me in the years I wrote those short stories, visit www.monitorgray.com

I found a quaint little spot up a steep, deeply rutted road. The tires spun to get me here, but on the second go they held. Huge fire pit and ample wood, but crawled in the back of my Subaru instead. In the back of my car, wrapped in a fleece blanket. It feels so much better here, like a fort when I was a kid. The safety of a small, well defined, familiar space.

A cool soft breeze blows across the interior of my car, from the open hatch to the driver side rear window. Children yelling in play at another campsite, just down the road. Gun shots ripple in quick succession from what I hope is some distance. (Later, at half past midnight someone unloaded an automatic gun for what I am guessing was a few dozen rounds.) The echo resounds from the canyon walls, eventually diminishing to a hushed roar. The smell of wood smoke mixes with roasted meat and sulfur.

The national forest was designed and designated for these function: people doing what they please, where they will, with no immediate supervision. Sometimes it scares me, but it is what I cherish most about the American southwest, the sensation of open space even within the confines of well mapped and over used territory.

I love going for hours, even days without hearing my own voice.

It is so grounding for me to walk at dusk or dawn in search of boulders to climb, a block of cheese in hand, carving off pieces to mix with bites of an apple. Apples always taste cool even when they have been in the sun. I never tire of the sound of pine needles beneath my feet. Lately, I walk barefoot even on the trails, my feet growing accustomed to their natural state.

If someone were to tell me I could never again use the Internet, I would smile. If someone were to tell me I would never again venture into a city, hear the sound of a car, eat from a restaurant or enter a crowded bar, I would feel relief. if someone were to tell me I could never write again, I would be horribly sad but take up singing, painting, and playing guitar.

If, however, someone were to tell me I could never again sleep on the ground, under the open sky, I would prefer to die.

About an hour past noon, from my pool side chair I noticed another kid splashing water in my kid’s face. My boy splashed back, laughing. The other kid’s father noticed and jumped to his feet by the side of the pool, a half dozen chairs down from mine.

“Hey! Leave my kid alone!”

My son was not certain who was being yelled at over the noise of the public pool.

“What do you think you are doing? Don’t be splashing like that! You’re gonna get in trouble,” he added

My son got it this time. He looked at me. I looked at his father who was strapping on a holster and gun over his swimming trunks.

Oh shit. Here we go, I thought.

I called to Tom, “Hey, son, come on out of the pool. He isn’t worth the trouble.”

“What you mean ‘he ain’t worth the trouble’?” his father asked as he turned toward me.

“Hey man. It’s not worth a fight. Just two kids splashing, right?”

“Yeah. It’s worth it. Your kid’s a punk ass.”

“They were just playing. It’s water. It’s what kids do. It doesn’t hurt.”

“It doesn’t hurt? No. Maybe not. But you disrespecting my kid? That hurts.”

He lowered his hand to his hip. Is he going to shoot me? No way. That can’t fucking happen. No way. Not in public.

He took a few steps closer. I could see that he had been drinking and was not in a clear state of mind. Why they let him in with a gun is beyond me. But that’s Arizona law.

I called out, “Tom. Get out of the pool. Let’s go!”

“That’s what I thought. Fucking pussy.”

“Yeah. Suppose so.”

“What’d you say?! Hey! What’d you say to me?!”

He lunged forward, stumbled, and knocked me to my back. He tripped over my prone legs and fell on top of me, his pistol drawn and in his hand. When he put his arm out to brace his fall, the gun went off and there was silence. No one in the pool moved. Then a woman screamed.

“No! No! Oh my God no! My baby! You shot my baby! You shot my baby!” She ran to the edge of the pool and jumped in, screaming hysterically she choked on the water in attempt to find her feet, fully clothed.

The man rolled off me and to his side, looked over me to the pool where red water was mixing with blue. My legs, shoulders, and arms struggled to find purchase while a knot grew on the back of my skull. I could not see clearly but I recognized my son’s voice as he ran up to me, asking if I was ok.

The man pushed him aside, knocking him over as he found his own feet again. He started to realize what had happened, looking at his gun as though he had never seen one before.

Everyone was climbing out of the pool, save two life guards who dove in to pull the girl from the water. Even face down I could see that she didn’t have a chance, dead before she ever had a chance to drown.

The father’s kid was in shock, frozen in disbelief. His father was yelling at him to get his things. His voice rose as it was becoming apparent he intended to leave.

Two other men and one woman pulled guns from their day bags and blankets, warning him to not move. He didn’t listen, grabbed his kid, waved his gun at them and turned to run.

Two more shots were fired. The father fell to his knees. Everyone else lay flat on the concrete, the life guards holding their heads just above water at the edge of the pool, abandoning the girl’s body for their own safety.

The father turned to fire back but was hit a third time in the head. His son came alive again and screamed so loud people looked up from their prone positions, thinking he had been hit too. Tears streamed from his eyes as he ran to his father’s body, holding his bleeding, limp head in his hands.

He looked to my son Tom. I will never forget the look on his face.

It didn’t have to happen this way. There was no real danger and no reason for guns. But it nearly became reality, were it not for the second year vetoed by the governor of Arizona, keeping court houses, senior centers, public buildings and swimming pools free of firearms … for now.

Charles Heller, co-founder and spokesman of Arizona Citizens Defense League, said the group “expected better from someone who was rumored to be an ally of freedom.”

“We wish she would show more respect for Arizona’s constitutional provision about the right to keep and bear arms,” he told Reuters, moments after learning of the veto.

I am not against owning firearms, for hunting is a traditional means by which healthy, natural meat may be placed on the table for those families willing to work a little harder than driving their SUV to the local grocery store. If you feel the need to protect the interior of your home with a gun, it is not my place to dissuade you.

But the intent of this bill makes no sense. Nothing good can possibly come of this law. There is not a single scenario, not a single example in which everyone, anyone being allowed to bring a firearm into a public arena makes sense.

To defend the Second Amendment for the sake of defense alone is to tell the parents of the children and the children of the parents in a story not unlike that which I have imagined, that the Constitutional Right, written two hundred years ago in a very different time, is more important then the lives of those who will die.

In OSX, the Desktop automatically re-organizes itself without my request.

WTF?! Nothing, nothing upsets me more than coming back to my desktop and finding that the files and folders are not where I left them. It’s arrogant for Apple to assume that how I choose to organize my Desktop is not up to snuff.

Am I missing something? I cannot find a Preference or a setting which says, Leave my Desktop alone!

Ubuntu does.

Six months ago, I ran away from home after thirteen years in Loveland, Colorado. This was a reaction more than a decision as I needed to climb up and out of a dark, scary place. An exercise in self-awareness and self-control, I learned to let go.

I landed in Squamish, B.C. where I lived in a tent, climbed, and worked from local cafes. I attended the Supercomputing trade show in Seattle and worked as a volunteer staff member at the isolated Holden Village in the Washington Cascades. Since the beginning of 2012, I have lived every other few weeks in Phoenix, Arizona and Boise, Idaho with family and with friends. I met amazing people and experienced a challenging mix of pleasure and pain through new friendships. I rediscovered total, full mind and body peace at Joshua Tree and wonderful isolation in the Superstition Wilderness yet wrestle with anxiety still.

The contrasts are intense but the experience rich. Where I once saw my journey as an exercise in recovery, I now see that I learned to flow from place to place, to find “home” no matter where I set my bags. Where I am now is neither behind nor beyond where I started, but on a different path altogether.

What I learned in this process is not only a means to work through challenging times, but how one may live every day, for a lifetime. I found freedom in mobility which I will continue to employ, no matter how stationary I may someday live.

Live in the moment.
Engage the future but only a few days at a time. Intend for things to unfold but with limited attachment to outcome. If you find yourself in that place which is out of reach and full of fear, pull back, let go, and trust that it will come to you when the time is right.

Live for people, not things.
Spend less time in relationship with things and more time in relationship people. Reduce the clutter of ownership in order to make time for you and for other people in your life. Practice minimalism every day. Become self-reliant not through the acquisition of more, but through the desire for less such that you are comfortable without concern for what you left behind.

Live in a mobile home …
Find “home” within yourself so that no matter where you go, no matter where you end up, no matter what is given to you or taken away, you will be grounded and able to give freely of yourself to others.

… and care for it too.
This is the only body you will have, in this lifetime. Treat is as the finely tuned machine it is. We have changed what we put into our bodies more in the past 40 years than in the past 40,000 (“Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser). If it wasn’t available in markets just four or five decades ago, it’s not real food and should not pass between your lips. Exercise each and every day because your body is designed to walk, run, jump, and climb. As the longest distance running animals on this planet (“Born to Run” by Christopher McDougall), sitting in a chair all day will, slowly, kill you.

Give freely.
The greatest freedom we employ is not the freedom to do what we want (for that is in fact a burden in disguise) but the freedom to give of ourselves without concern for what we gain in return.

Choose your friends wisely.
Who we choose to accompany us on our journey both reflects and amplifies who we are. Welcome those who encourage your best habits, who cause you to laugh, who support you in reaching your goals.

Listen.
Trust those who ask questions more than they do speak. In return, ask questions and share only when asked for your experience or opinion. If you spend an entire day not speaking, that is a day well spent.

Do it wrong.
If everyone says you are doing it wrong, you may be doing it right. Pay attention to the context, listen carefully, and you’ll hear the difference between someone who shares their opinion out of fear and someone who expresses concern through love. In the end, however, the ones who likely have the “correct answer” are the ones who ask you what you need, and simply return your words to you.

Try … or walk away.
Work hard to achieve what you believe but do not be afraid to stop, step back, and try again from a new angle. Do not be afraid to walk away completely, for often is the case that those things we pursue without reward are the ones that come back to us when we no longer give chase.

Trust.
When fear drives you to make decisions, stop, back up, slow down —don’t jump! Instead, look at the situation from other points of view until you find a means of moving from a place of trust. Wait, it will unfold. You’ll feel the difference when you get there, you’ll just know.

Think.
Make time to just think, every day. Disconnect from the Internet. Turn off the TV. Walk away from the cell phone and just be. Close your eyes and enjoy your brain’s capacity to take you to places your body may never go. Inside the nucleus of an atom or to the distant reaches of a binary star. You may find reason to gasp or smile or simply breathe. Discover the joy which may be reached only through contemplation.

Never stop learning.
All research shows that the very act of learning a new language, a new activity (ie: juggling, climbing, dancing), or reading new subjects changes the wiring of your brain. Open new pathways before the old ones become frozen and resistant to change.

Make love to the setting sun.
Get outside early. Stay outside late. Feel the rays of the sun warm your entire body, not just your bare face, arms, or hands. Share yourself with someone you love as the shadows grow long.

What happened to being able to simply, quickly roll-up a desktop Window?

This is a study in efficiency of motion.

Double-click, the Window rolls up, and the mouse remains in the exact same position to again double-click which returns the Window to its full position. As this effort is driven by a desire to peek behind the Window or to reduce a number of Windows to a minimal footprint and yet keep them available (as when editing multiple photos in Photoshop or GIMP), it makes sense that the Window remain in place.

However, with OSX, a double-click on the top Window bar causes the Window to fly off to the dock. The user is then forced to retrieve the Window which requires moving the mouse pointer to the edge or bottom of the screen, wait for the Dock to appear (if like me you have it auto-hide in order to save room on the Desktop), determine which of the icons represents the Window you just minimized, and then select it in order to bring it back to its original position again.

Literally, what should be a 1-2 second event becomes a 10-15 second ordeal, more if you have several Windows minimized on the dock and must open and close each until you find the one you desire.

Of all the things I have experienced in OSX, this stands out as the most inefficient, the most time consuming, and the most frustrating.

I recognize that OSX offers a function quick key for displaying all the open Windows on the Desktop, but that does not solve the same issue. Rolling up a Window is a specific function that serves a specific purpose, to get behind that Window for a brief period of time, or to neatly organize a number of Windows while others are engaged.

Need I say it again? Of course, Ubuntu offers simple, no frills Window control.

Renaming files is to an operating system what a sharp knife is to a functional kitchen—either it cuts quickly and accurately, or it is a painful experience and you lose blood for the effort.

In working with photographs and video, I am daily renaming dozens, sometimes hundreds of files through the Desktop interface. If it were not for my shared partitions and direct access to OSX files through Ubuntu / VMWare, the OSX file management interface would be the undoing of me.

I want to rename a file. The function “Rename” is not available in the center or right mouse click options. In fact, it’s not a dedicated, direct access function at all. Instead, I must perfectly time my selection of the file name such that I click once, wait, and then click again in order that the name is hi-lighted and I may make the desired change.

Now, if I double-click too slowly, OSX registers only that I have selected the file twice.

If I click too rapidly, OSX assumes I want to open the file. If the resulting action inadvertently launches an application I am screwed waiting—completely out of commission for the time it takes to launch, activate fonts and filters and whatever else the application requires—for the app to close again.

Or best of all, when no matter how many times I click, wait, and click again, the file name refuses to hi-light. I realize it is frozen, forcing me to click on another file and then back again, or in the ultimate tests of my patience, close the window and open it again in order to regain that most basic functionality.

Yes, this is why I use the command line in OSX as often as I use the desktop.

I have heard people say, “Dude. You’re doing something wrong. I don’t have that problem.”

And I respond, “How much file management do you do a day? How many files do you rename in a given eight hours?”

“Well, you know, … a few?”

Right. Lower volume. Slower pace. Fewer mistakes.

Fine. I am a “power user”. But isn’t that what OSX was designed for? Am I not the intended audience? Oh! Wait. No. I forgot. I am suppose to listen to iTunes, let iPhoto manage all my photographs (and then lose years of organization when the database corrupts), and at some point abandon my laptop for an iPad because I don’t need the desktop any longer.

There is a reason Windows and Linux are built around 3-button mice—because the user has far more rapid, efficient access to a wider number of functions without intermediary steps.

Keep It Simple, Stupid does not mean one button does it all. KISS is a design paradigm, a philosophy which seeks the path of least resistance to any given user need.

In Ubuntu, you simply right-click, select Rename, and you are done. It works every time.

Consider that in OSX you desire to move a file or Folder to the next level up, to the parent Folder.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to do this without opening another Finder window in order to drag between the two windows. Depending upon the depth at which you sit in the file system, this could be one, two, … or a dozen extra mouse clicks.

Sorry, but I have to ask, what are you thinking Apple?

In Ubuntu, the full path is listed across the top of each Folder window. Any file, photo, or Folder may be dragged onto any level given in the directory structure for instant migration to the new location.

Simple. Efficient. Makes sense.

Issue #4 – New Folders Fail to Maintain Nest
It’s a simple concept. Easy to program. And yet since the release of the first release of OSX, Apple has never corrected this most frustrating desktop behavior.

Do this:

1. Open a desktop Folder.
2. Spin down an existing Folder to display its contents.
3. Select the same Folder.
4. SHIFT-COMMAND-N or choose “New Folder” from the File menu.

Exactly. The new folder pops to the top of the directory for the entire partition, not within the selected Folder. Why? I have no idea. I cannot conceive of a reason as to how this is beneficial. You are forced to double-click into the Folder, create your new Folder, and then click back to the higher level in order to transfer files (if from another nested Folder on the same partition). Three extra mouse-clicks for something as simple as making a new Folder.

Waste of time. Waste of energy. Frustrating!

Of course, Ubuntu does what it should, paying attention to the Folder you have selected. File management is just that much more efficient in Linux.

Issue 3 – Windows Lose their Position
OSX Finder windows appear to open to random positions and sizes, from session to session, time to time. For instance, if I open a desktop window, position it where I desire, close it, and then re-open—it returns to the same position and size—Sometimes.

But not always.

And most certainly NOT when I reboot the computer. No, then OSX determines that whatever my preference was in the prior session, it is overwritten by the invisible hand of Steve’s ghost.

Again, Ubuntu remembers what YOU do. After all, YOU are the user.