Back from my Dragon Vacation

Another short post from this old Dragon. I'm back from two weeks of hanging out with mountain dragons in the Andes and the water dragons of the Amazon. It was a great break from my usual dragon business, but this dragon is still happy to be home.

I read several books while I was away, including The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. Have I mentioned yet that I think that man has streaks of pure genius? Well I do. I read the book once when I was but a young dragonling and it didn't' have much meaning to me. But this time it was so very different.

There were passages of the book where ol' Pappa Hemingway seemed to be speaking right to me. It was like Jack and the Pappa were having a nice long talk. I wouldn't say that he solved any problems I've been dealing with, not that dragons have problems that our appetite can't solve, but he did give me new perspective.

Something to think about while I have a nice long slumber on my treasure trove. And now I will go and have that long dream filled nap that I need to sort things out. I hope that I will find the clear path I need to take before I awake though experience has taught me nothing is ever that easy. I do have more to think about and more paths to chose from and with that I am off to sleep.

I hope the sun will peak from the clouds tomorrow,

Jack

Live from Cusco, Peru

Jack doesn´t have much time, it is time to eat and dragons arn´t overly verbose when hungry.

Cusco is beautiful, the Incas have spoken to me even though they are much older than I am.

Hemmingway has also spoken through The Sun Also Rises.

More later, it takes a lot of gunea pigs to feed a dragon.

Jack

Leaving for South America

Well ol' Jack's about to leave for a couple weeks in South America. A Dragon vacation as it were. I need to get away from Dragon business and what's been bothering me in and around my den lately. I will be dropping in on Machu Picchu and am hoping for some kind of spiritual revelation, not that these things happen to old dragons very much. But I could use a little unworldly intervention to help me set things straight in this sad old mind of mine.

The weather has been gloomy and overcast for several days now. This has put me into an unusually dreary mood. But I awoke this morning just knowing that the sun might be out for just a little while. I spent the entire morning arguing with myself, between expecting the sun and insisting that it wasn't going to be out for a long time yet. But the sun did come out, and I enjoyed it, but as it dipped behind the clouds again, I felt that I might just be a fool. Does the sun wait for me, does she miss me when I am in my mountain, does she feel my loss the way I feel hers?

Off to vacation now, I might post from vacation and I might not post until I return. It matters little since the world never feels the loss of a dragon...

Perfect Moments

This is going to be a short post on a happier topic. I was lounging around my den today when I suddenly took notice of some of the pictures I have framed and nearby. There is one picture in particular that caught my eye. There are six of us, not all dragons I might add, sitting in a tight cluster holding up small cartons of milk and cans of Steinlager, grinning like we just won the lottery. We would later come to call ourselves the Alphabet group after a late night conversation in which we used letters to indicate people rather than names. I could almost relay that particular conversation word for word, now seven years later, but it doesn't matter. It would fail to amuse any, but the people in the picture most of whom I have long sense lost contact with.

This particular picture has always been near and dear to me and my fondness for it only grows with the years. This photo perfectly captures a Moment. That's Moment with a capital M not to be confused with the lower case word that doesn't entirely share the same meaning. There are times in our lives when everything just seems to fall in place, and just for that moment everything is right with the world. These Moments usually involve family or friends and they are often fleeting, over before we recognize it. But when a Moment happens we carry the memory with us for the rest of our lives.

In the movie The Beach, stop the eye rolling it at least had a good message, Richard talks about the true meaning of paradise. It's not a place you go, it's moment in time with the right people. This is why I sometimes refer to these Moments as Paradise Moments sine that is what they are. Paradise is an ideal, not a place. It isn't lost, just well hidden throughout most of our lives and when we find it we often don't even realize it until it is gone. We can not not force a moment to happen, but we can plant the seeds, water it, and keep the weeds out. To do this we simply must live in the moment (that's the smaller case moment) when we are with family or friends. Push the worries aside and enjoy the company in others in its purest sense. The Moments will come.

As for the picture on my shelf, it has been years since I have seen any of those people. Most of them have once again become strangers to me. But I know that each and every one of us lived in that Moment and it won't be forgotten. There are five other copies of the same picture in the same frame somewhere our there. Maybe they are stored away in a box or lost in some corner of someone's home or office. But, I like to think that each one of us comes across the memory of that Moment from time to time and smiles. The Alphabet Group will never inhabit the same space again, but we live in that picture and we live in that moment, forever...

The Old Dragon and the Sea, part I

I'm a old and wise dragon who's lived more life than my outward appearance might portend. I've seen, experienced and lived enough that not much really phases me anymore. But, every once in a while something that shouldn't be so significant in an old dragon's life throws me entirely off balance. One of these events happened just a few days ago and this dragon is still reeling from the effects while wondering why he didn't see it coming. So what's a dragon to do, read Hemingway of course. Somewhere in the midst of my devastation two books suddenly called to be read again: The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises.

These two books have something very important in common, aside from being written by the same author. When I was much younger, I was told that these books could neither be fully appreciated nor understood by someone of my youth. At the time I scoffed at such remarks and read them anyway, but now looking back I wonder if I did fully appreciate and understand these books. And so it was the The Old Man and the Sea in particular called to me. I picked it up a few days ago in the hope that Papa Hemingway had some wisdom to impart to an old dragon such as myself.

Did the book speak to me directly? No, there was no "hey dragon, I'm talking to you" moment in the book. But there was plenty of situations that made me think and reevaluate my own life and situations. So many in fact that I've decided to break it down to several posts over several days.

The book was about relationships (man/boy, man/sea, man/fish) far more than anything else. The one that struck me the hardest was the one between the old man and the boy. Early on it appeared that the relationship was very much one sided, the boy helped the old man, Santiago, out of pity, but that was not the case. In these odd relationships, between people of wildly different ages or backgrounds, there is always something that each gains from the other. It was obvious that the old man gained help with the physical labor and companionship. And the boy too gained companionship though such things mean less to a boy than an old man (or an old dragon for that matter). But, the boy also gained from the wisdom of the man, even if this wisdom was often imparted through actions rather than words. Towards the end of this book that becomes all the more clear as the boy begings to understand how much knowledge and learning he stands to lose if the old man passes away.

Of course I don't think Papa Hemingway leaves everything that neat and clear cut. There is more to this friendship than just an exchange of companionship for knowledge. The old man is given a window onto a world of youth that he has so long left behind. He can sometimes, just for a moment, bask in what it was like to be so young again. For one who has walked long paths since the days of his youth, this little glimpse into youth can be more treasured than any fish they will catch while on the boat. But in return, he forms an internal, unspoken obligation to teach the boy and impart his wisdom.

And where does the book leave us? The man lays dying having completed the greatest accomplishment of his lifetime. He has channeled every ounce of his strength, his wisdom and his soul into bringing that fish in. Even though the fish is nothing, but a skeleton when the man makes port, it is still his magnum opus, his final exam in life. Santiago has reached the pinnacle of his craft with this catch, but he has also traded his very life in the struggle. And when he sleeps he dreams about his own youth. And so it is, the boy loves the man for the wisdom, while the man loves the boy for that which his wisdom will never give him, youth.

What does the sea and boats and old men and boys have to do with a tired dragon? It reminds one that our wisdom is worth nothing if we do not freely give of it. It reminds this old dragon, that he gains from those glimpses into the windows of youth. In return he obliges himself to impart that wisdom that he can. And he must impart this wisdom without tainting the youth with dragon bitterness. It is not mine to take, only to give...

The patience of a Dragon

I find it odd that nobody has ever coined the phrase, 'patience of a Dragon'. Because that's pretty much what we do best, have patience. Though I say that and realize that few people either know or appreciate this aspect of our nature.

Dragons tend to be reclusive, rarely allowing ourselves to be seen. When one catches us unaware our first reaction is often one of hunger, and I am not speaking metaphorically here. A dragon's nature is to eat, it is only our overwhelming loneliness that leads us to befriend rare individuals that would otherwise be breakfast. That's where getting to know a dragon can be a very dangerous thing. Even if one makes it by the initial feeding impulse, it's no guarantee that a dragon won't eat you at a latter time. I for one tend not to eat anyone until I have come to know their character. I snack on the bad ones. Those that aren't bad but don't amuse me I run off, leaving precious few that I am willing to befriend.

But once we enter into these rare friendships we dragons tend to bond very tightly. It is entirely mutually beneficial, we have the wisdom of centuries to impart and in return we get that companionship that is missing from a dragons life. But it is always a double edged sword as we know that nothing is permanent. So we take what we can get, revel in every moment and spend our energy committing it all to memory, making little movies in our mind. And my long winded nature takes over again, I still haven't said anything about our patience.

So we dragons make these friendships ignoring the fact that dragons and people are so very different. We are immortal and spend most of our days sleeping or musing amongst our piles of treasure, locked away deep in some mountain cave. Humans have what they call 'a life' which is important I suppose if you are not immortal. So while we dragons would gladly spend a decade squirreled away somewhere talking to our new found friends, this just isn't something that people can do. They visit, we enjoy our time together and they leave to go live their life. While we wait.

Once that bond develops it is difficult to break and difficult to forget. When our friends leave we try to occupy ourselves with counting and organizing our treasure, reading, and tending to our dragon business. We tell ourselves that they will return in a month or whenever, but then we start to set ourselves up for never seeing them again. And we wait, watching the entrance to the cave, or scanning the horizon for a boat long before any boat is expected. We spend long days watching and waiting for any sign that our friend has returned to us. At night we try to tell ourselves that day may never come, that we are being stupid for hoping for it, that we just need to move on, but we can't. Such is the nature of dragons, we are patient because it is all we have, patience and hope...

imy

Living life like a Bullfighting festival

A strange title for a strange post in a strange dragon's blog. I need to start with some disclaiming otherwise we will get off on the wrong paw, er foot. Normally, we dragons don't care to disclaim, because we are big, mean and deadly. If you don't like what we have to say, well that's not exactly our problem, but I am trying to reach out to people and that requires a more delicate touch, thus the disclaimers.

First and foremost, the philosophy of the Bull fighting festival is not original to Jack Dragon. In fact, I lifted it from Mexico by James Michener. This book is essentially about a three day bull fighting festival and Michener expounds on how the three days of the festival all carry different feelings with them. I've taken this explanation and applied it as a life Philosophy, that part is my own though the original idea is borrowed.

This brings us to the second disclaimer, on bullfighting in general. Many see this as a barbaric sport, but I think it is misunderstood. Having attended a bull fight, not an easy thing for a dragon to do, I learned something that I did not previously know, the bull can win. It doesn't happen often, but when a bull fights very well, the crowd can signal, via waving white cloths, that they would like the bull to 'win'. If the crowd gets their way, the bull will spend the rest of his life living in a nice pasture and siring offspring. Considering that most bulls in the rest of the world end up slaughtered for meat, I think that the chance to fight for a life of leisure and sex is probably the better deal. But then again I might just be thinking like a dragon.

Michener tells us that day two is the best day of a bull fighting festival. On day one we spend our time getting acquainted with our surrounding, learning the schedules and the lay of the land, and meeting new people. On day three we are preparing for departure, saying goodbyes and already thinking about what we must do when we get home. But on day two we know our surroundings, have friends about us and nothing to do but enjoy ourselves. Day two is where we can live in the moment and it is where we make the memories that we will always look back on fondly. And there in lies the life lesson, always live as much as life as possible in day 2.

Now the problem is that we dragons generally live in day 3 while people are often dwellers in day 1. The difference here is one of the nature of being a dragon. We dragons live forever which means that everything, except our lives, will have an end to it. We do not enter into anything, be it a festival, some type of dragon labor (yes we dragons do have work that needs done), or a friendship, without knowing that it will come to end at some point. This can sometimes overshadow everything in that we spend our time preparing ourselves for the end rather than enjoying the time we have. People on the other hand seem oblivious to ends. They spend all there time trying to make things better or railing on the fact that it isn't. And every day spent in day 1 is a day lost from day 2.

And the solution to the problems lies in day 4. Because day 4 will come and spending extra time in day 1 or day 3 will neither delay nor stop this from happening. Day 4 is when we sit back and think about which we have done. Without those day 2 memories, we are left with very little.

And so we come to my advice, live every possible minute in day 2. If you are raising kids (or dragonlings), don't waste all your time trying to make them or everything around them perfect, spend your time enjoying them for what they are in that moment. Don't worry about the fact that they will be starting kindergarten soon, or riding a bicycle, driving a car, or graduation. Rather enjoy them as they are, because when they're no longer kids you won't be able to get that moment back and you won't be fondly remembering your worries or how much time you spent trying to make everything perfect. And here's a hint, neither will they.

So it is with everything else you do. When you go on vacation, leave all the troubles of your real life behind as soon as you step on the plane. You can pick them up when you arrive back at your home airport, along with your luggage, but not a moment sooner. If you are in highschool love it for what it is, and don't dwell on how it's not like middle school or how great college is going to be. In college, forget highschool, but don't think about the real world until you need to. Everything will come to you in time, all you can decide is how to make the memories, those crystal clear flawless moments, that you will keep for a lifetime.

And that is how this dragon lives his life, and it is the rule he trys to use when making friends. Because some friends will last a lifetime, but many will be lost along the way. If you don't know fully what I mean, see my post on being a dragon. I take each friendship and try to spend every moment we have together in day 2. Because day 3 almost always comes, but if I were to spend my time thinking about that, I would have so much less to treasure when it is all gone. And sometimes day 3 comes too fast, and we get kicked in the teeth because we weren't expecting it. But that is why we dragons have our treasure troves and quiet caves to sleep away our pain...

The name is, Jack, Jack Dragon and this is my blog.

That may seem like an odd name, but we dragons, like most other mythological creatures generally use either our species or genus as a surname. I prefer to stick with genus since the species distinctions amongst dragons generally relate to coloring which I find a bit racist. And my given name is Jack because that's the name I use. Of course given names are generally given, usually by parents, but most dragons aren't very much into the parenting thing. Thus, I was left as an egg by my parents whom apparently had better things to do. I would have liked to know that they at least cared enough to see me through that hatching process, but we dragons can be a callous and indifferent lot even towards our own offspring. I've ended that cycle with my dragonlings who I dote on constantly, but that is another story for another day. For now, the important point is that I was given no name, and so I named myself.

This post was meant to be an introduction to dragons, but I've tangented upon my name, which is probably a perfect segue into a common characteristic in dragons, we can be long winded. That comes from the curse or blessing of living forever. Immortality isn't all it's cracked up to be, but that lament too must be saved for another day and another post. It gives us plenty of time to think, and plenty of time to observe, and lots of time to think about what we've observed. Thus when we speak about any given subject we often have much to say. That alone does not make us long winded, but add to that the fact that we have infinite hours in infinite days in infinite years to speak and we often just fail to see the need to edit ourselves down to something more manageable. As you can see I am once again droning on and on. And this is the edited version. As a dragon, I like to try to be brief, but I often fail miserably. Our long windedness is why you don't see many other dragon blogs, because we just can't type fast enough, claws not being designed for such things, to get all of our thoughts down.

Dragons are generally large, old, and pretty terrifying to people who either don't know us or don't understand us. So terrifying in fact that few people ever learn to fully trust us. Of course this probably isn't anyone's fault, but our own. As a species we tend to be mean, and as I already mentioned both callous and indifferent. Even when we are trying to by nice, sometimes accidents occur. Immense beings such as ourselves often accidentally crush our friends when moving about without proper forethought. Those dragons that breath fire, poison and other such hazardous substances often unintentionally injure just by laughing too hard with our muzzles pointed in the wrong direction. I should note, that for my part I am an air breathing dragon. Which means that I am quite people friendly. Though people tend to be scared of me just the same.

Being both immortal and terrifying makes for a pretty lonely existence. We tend not to make friends too often or too easily since friends our just a heart break waiting to happen. Either they give in to their fears, or get bored with us, just stop believing that we exist all together, or are warned away from us by well meaning friends and family. We dragons may be tough and wise, but we have a soft spot for people, which is our greatest weakness. Over the years we learn to shy away from most of them since it is easier to lock our hearts away rather than having them unintentionally broken. It was such a heart-break, narrowly avoided which led this dragon to begin a blog. And that story too, must be left for another time.

There is one more thing I want people to understand about dragons, it's about our treasure troves. Yes, we all pretty much have them, and no they aren't nearly as interesting as people want to think. I am not sure where the misunderstanding started, but that Tolkein fellow didn't help it out with his writing about Smaug and all, but as a general rule our troves do not consist of great wealth. At least not a wealth of gems and precious metals as is often portrayed. We are collectors, and usually collectors of memories more than anything else. Sure there have been a couple of notable hoarders of gold and such, but they are the exception rather than the rule. As an interesting note, if you humans should care to know, the great lost treasures of the Aztecs are not lost so much as squirreled away by one of these treasure loving dragons. They are deep beneath the earth and I doubt they will ever be found by a human. My own treasure trove consists of trinkets, mementos and memories. Photographs of people I have known, bits and pieces of my dragonlings childhood, sea shells, knick knacks, scraps of paper with cryptic writing, books, and memories. These things might look like clutter or litter, but each one holds an important memory, some of these memories I will share here on my blog.

And with that I will end this introduction to dragons. There will be a part II, and possibly even more after that, but for now my claws grow tired and my treasure trove calls for attention.

Jack Dragon