Architects are the co-conspirators of the art world, for without them, every priceless, beautiful canvas would be forever grounded.

My dad was a great artist.

Each wall of our family home was a showroom of his life’s work. He taught us that to appreciate art, you must have equally high regard for the wall of its final resting place. Together, the form and function of the architecture on which it hangs either enhances or diminishes the beauty of each placement.

Maybe that’s where it all started for me, I’m not quite sure. But in addition to being an art-lover, I’ve always been a fan of extraordinary architecture and each of its artists.

Because architecture can’t just stop at being beautiful, it also needs to work, make sense, be functional, justifiable and explainable. It is art’s framework.

While the painter can imagine anything and create it on a canvas to be admired, the architect can’t stop there. Its critics wouldn’t allow it.

I am one of those critics.

If I take anything to the grave at all, it’s liable to be a very long list of questions to present to a master Architect who will have a lot of explaining to do.

There was a time when my finite mind attempted answers to all the infinite questions about certain phenomena, countless whys and why nots and general subjects about evil, tragedy and the reason bad things happen to good people. I’m sure I’ve drawn some wrong conclusions and missed some big picture explanations along the way but with the audience of the Master, I expect some answers about its form and function.

I don’t remember if it was a dream or just one of the random thinkings for which I’m famous, but a scenario unfolded before me that was at the very least, comforting and at the very best, became a cornerstone to my faith.

Here’s how it went…

I knocked on the door and was granted entry. That in itself was important, because it meant I’d met all the Architectural requirements. Boldly, I thanked Him and we were cordial, but I was the first to speak. “I have some questions of You, mister.” “I imagine you do,” He said, “but let’s follow the protocol and I promise you answers.” With patience as a virtue and satisfied with the negotiations so far, He asked me to follow the clouds to the left and at the junction, hang a right into the door marked “Blueprints.” I obliged and followed the path, promising to return with my list.

Upon entering, the room was one massive table with rolls of giant blueprints awash as far as the eye could see. “Pull the plans on Miller, Donald S., please,” I heard on the overhead, and a rather large set of the plans was unfurled before me.

Now these blueprints weren’t of architectural structures per se, but of connections and events of my so many years from single conversations long ago with strangers, random smiles and frowns I’d made over the years, all the way to complex situations I’d miraculously survived. Pretty much everything was there, and more than my memory could handle at the time. There were blue lines between the events connecting one to another, to another and to another. Tragic events, beautiful events, and my responses to each. It was, indeed, beautiful. An architectural masterpiece in blue, and every corner, joist and beam was precisely connected.

As I followed the lines of my actions and their effects, the conclusions were logical, functional and made so much sense, my list of questions erased themselves one by one.

I was there for maybe hours, maybe days if time was even a concept anymore. I was humbled and I cried as I saw the effects of my words and behaviors upon others and theirs upon me for all my existence. My entire list was explained away.

Emerging from the room, I made a left down the hall.

“Any questions?” He asked.

The collected curiosities of all my years had vanished. What had made no sense at all had been meticulously penned from the beginning of time in blue with all precise measurements and angles and structurally, was not only beautiful, but sensibly so. All my whimsical explanations had been dismissed as quickly as a fleeting deja vu.

I just hung there, awestruck, finally resting in peace.

And He stood there for an eternity, admiring the beautiful masterpiece on the wall before him.

And for the life of me, all I could admire was the Architect.

The box said 1,000 pieces, but never promised they’d fit together.

It’s now clear I’m not creating the picture on the cover.

In my much younger mind, it should have resembled that perfect cover photo where all the pieces fit so nicely together. But then, my life has been anything but.

The 2am text hit my phone like a tow truck without a conscience.

It had been many sober years since his name had popped up on my phone alongside the memories of that dark night when I almost lost my best friend.

“Can you call me?”

Some replies can wait until morning. I could tell this wasn’t one of them.

Two years into my sobriety three years back, this man saved two lives, one of which was mine.

Enough clean time under my belt to have known better that night, I let my puppy, Butch, run into the street, only to get plowed by a tow truck, left spinning on the asphalt in pain from a broken leg. Not having the $1,500 to get him medical attention, an angel named Peter stepped in with a credit card at the last moment to foot a bill I have never repaid.

He’d insisted it was a gift from a fellow dog lover and we both were in a fury over the tow truck driver who’d fled the scene.  My dog recovered, but apparently, Peter has not.

I phoned him.

He’d taken medical leave from work last winter and through a series of insurance foibles, he has been forced to use the last of his savings over the past six months to keep himself alive. Now on public assistance and fighting insurance companies and for his life, he needed someone, and stat.

For those who follow me, it’s widely known that my dog and I are an inseparable team. Now nearly four years old, he’s a Facebook celebrity and brings more joy to me than a life of drugs ever promised without delivering.  The only reason he’s still here is because of an angel named Peter who now needs a tow truck.

We talked of the dominoes of his life which had fallen in rapid succession, bringing him to reluctantly call on those who he thought might be able to help in his own time of need. And as these stories often go, apparently, I’m the only one who has returned his call.

I don’t make much in the non-profit world. I suppose that’s why it’s called non-profit. But I pay my rent and utilities and eat and love my dog and never forget visits from angels.

“I have never forgotten what you did for me and Butch, Peter, and despite how long it’s been, I also won’t be one of those people who don’t answer your call.”

Out of shame for asking, he cried on the phone and explained he wasn’t looking to be repaid. He’d forgiven the debt long ago and gently refused my offer three years back when we last talked.  He said he called me because I’d always seemed different from everyone else, even during the days I was awash in drugs and lost in addiction.

We’re meeting this week and I will be giving him weekly assistance from my checking account to help him get back on his feet.  And in my line of work, I can now offer him so much more than money to fish him out of the mess and stop the domino effect that has brought this angel down.

I came home and held my best friend on my lap and looked down at the scar on his hind leg from that once dark night. He glanced up at me, turned, and licked the scar as if to remind me that sometimes a tow truck needs a tow truck.

When You’re your own celebrity

You like Yourself a lot.

You’re fun and full of levity

They never considered it a question of worth but always counted themselves lesser than the greater gain. Now free from a nation they freed, and lost to the lives they saved, they wonder from the heavens in valor and silence at those of this barbecuing, forgetful nation who merely consider it an occupational entitlement.

Memorial Day isn’t so much about being happy, but about taking a thankful moment of silent honor away from the grill to recall the merits of sacrifice at any price.

Then eat your burger, jump in your pool and be very, very happy that a complete stranger once believed you were worth it.

We now have compelling evidence that people need more to survive in this world than food, water and shelter. If these findings are true, Maslow will need to amend his hierarchy, science its premises, and boardrooms across the globe will rewrite employee manuals to embrace this new 4th force. The food pyramid, the flow chart, Venn diagrams, dietary labels, nothing is sacred here forward.

In huge numbers, people are dying to laugh.

Save yo wife, save yo children, malnutrition of the funny bone isn’t funny. It’s the new killer and literally, no joking matter. A high stress diet low in humor recently caused pile ups of 150 million viewers on YouTube to hear “The Laugh of the Chewbacca Mom” and other sillinessesess. Countless workplace millions daily risk it all for a single bellyful of breakroom laughter behind closed doors while cutting their cheese.

She sees more good in people than is probably there. Everyone is her equal. Life is not viewed as her obstacle and she has never glimpsed nor found others much different than herself. Her sights are set on more important things. She envisions a world of hope others may never see and knows the value of a slow, certain pace to navigate it. Foresight is overrated and hindsight has taught her nothing. Sunrises are for feeling, moonbeams are for imagining, and the winds carry her to exotic, faraway lands of her mind. She has heard more stories and touched more people in her 82 years than in most lifetimes combined, faced more discrimination, and learned there are no rose colored glasses to change what is. And that love was indeed, blind, just like her.

“Speaking of pterodactyls, I’m about as ancient.”

That’s how she introduced herself.

A greeting like that from the 91 year old woman who seated her brittle, fossiled bones in the chair across from me was pretty much all I needed that early May morning at an outreach I do for poor senior citizens.

“In paleontological terms, I’m a dinosaur,” she badabumped, and I slapped the table in unison as a drum in agreement like the bad sidekick in a vaudeville duo.  Together, our timing was damn good, and I miss her terribly.

She continued the schtick with a brief lesson of the Mesozoic epoch from which I’m now convinced she came, and told me how she expected to be just as extinct very soon.  In her era, she was a geography professor, but that was decades ago when she had a much larger wing span, the memory of a great Mammoth, and didn’t need a walker to get across her territory.  And indeed, this was her territory.

As much as I needed us to get down to the business that brought her to me, I gave her the stage and she earned every enthusiastic applause. She was masterful at mixing her dino-metaphors with the stories of her life.  She told me how she was deposited in the desert several years ago by loving family members whom she has neither seen nor heard from since.  A pittance would be a generous description of her social security income which pays the rent, keeps the lights on and buys her fewer groceries than she deserves.  This dinosaur had a story to tell.

It’s not unlike most I hear every day among the poor senior citizens who spend their final years scavenging to survive and fending off predators.

We sat and talked for at least an hour that morning. The stories she told me have since–like the dinosaurs–been buried for several months now.  She was one of my most entertaining mornings in recent memory and taught me to be a better storyteller because of it.

There are some people who come for just an hour,

and live with you for the rest of your life.

This one still has me at pterodactyl.

I lost his phone number many years ago while in the throes of an 8 year Meth addiction I forgot to stop.

Desperately owing him a fourth step apology, my Facebook friend request went unacknowledged for the past three years, until yesterday.

He messaged me to say he was happy I finally got my life back together and would like to have lunch when he’s in town.

Recovering the worst mistakes of your life are rarely given such fortunate opportunity when you give up too soon or lose the humility that brought you to it in the first place and keeps the door to it always ajar.

I’m Don Miller, a grateful recovering addict for life.