NAKED IRONY

It is early in the morning but I am awake and exercising my lean digits across my well-worn keyboard.  I've already punished the rest of my body on that damned elliptical and decided it only fair to exercise them as well.

 It is necessary to make mention of the lean composition of my fingers because they are the only part of my entire body that totally conform to that descriptor, and I need to remind myself of that visually redemptive fact sometimes.  Particularly now that the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated has somehow found its way back as a fixture among the other, less threatening periodicals in the master bathroom.

Until such time as it becomes passe and I notice that Consumer Reports or Men's Health have worked their way once again to the fore of the magazine bin on the floor, I am doomed to absorb the stark contrast between the reflection of myself in the mirror and whatever nubile goddess (who, as every year, has been ordered to hide her breasts and hold her swim top) graces the cover and is reflected behind me like some petty, vindictive, under-clad angel of Christmas' Past.

Not that I was ever a contender for the job even in my youth, but at least age gave me a fighting chance and the laws of gravity were squarely in my corner mopping my brow and giving me that rousing shove to continually get back in the ring.  It is obvious that at some point the bell rang indicating the match had ended, but I was probably too busy packing lunches for my kids or attending little league games or scrubbing toilets to notice.

However, based on the battered visual I am left with, it would appear it was a knockout and not one in my favor.   Now I'm left with a body that has taken one too many c-sections to the groin, sleepless nights that have registered as dark half-moons under my eyes and days, months and years of female stoicism  carved like a fine-lined, topographic map of domestic and personal upheavals and restorations on my baleful scowl.

And as I awkwardly maneuver my naked body to the shower while my glossy-papered nemesis gloats in all her tabloid glory from her corner of the lavatory ring, I am thinking that even Rocky Balboa must look better today than I do.

I know that when a door closes, a window supposedly opens, and in theory that is true.  I've discovered such windows flying open right and left as I've watched the corresponding slamming of both the doors of options as well as those of action; which leaves me wondering whether God has perhaps some obsession with irony.

Why would it be that just as our eyes have adjusted to the consequential glare of the benefits in living by the Golden Rule and the brilliant logic behind the principles of letting things be and rising above pettiness and the advantage of focusing your energies on giving more than we receive, would He also arrange the commensurate deterioration of our bodies?

Just when we reach the age and stage where we can finally say we've got so much to offer, we are also at the age and stage where nobody wants it.

The social and cultural preoccupation is decidedly fixed upon the character and form of the Sports Illustrated swim suit models and whether or not they can actually put those swimsuit tops on themselves or is the complexity such that they require assistance.  What subtle treasures of coherent thought even these beauties may harbor between their perfect ears is of little or no consequence and less so from anyone grazing the edges of gravity's tenacious grasp.

I'm not entirely sure why this is the imaginary road my brain ambled down today.  I don't really care about the swimsuit models and am fairly well tenured in the art of acceptance; at least enough not to let myself become seriously disturbed by anything radically defined by the laws of physics and biology.

I suppose that, in part, it is because I don't want to explore anymore dark corners for a while and felt that a little bit of levity was necessary.  After the last few entries this blog was beginning to resemble a really bad country western song where its always raining, you're misunderstood and dang lonely, the kid's in jail, the dog dies and your man's done run off with the check-out gal from The Piggly Wiggly. (I made that last one up.  We don't have a Piggly Wiggly here.)

Not only do I want to avoid sounding as though I can only see through a glass darkly, but I would rather be roped to a honey tree in a forest of Black Bears than believe my words bring to mind the refrain of some song belted out at The Grand Ole Opry.  My sincerest apologies to any and all country music aficionados out there.  For whatever reason, it just ain't my thing.

Actually, I'm still looking for my thing, and given the image reflected in my mirror this morning, I'd better get my ass in gear.  Time is definitely flagging me with a perceivable deadline, which is a little annoying considering the fact that I feel I've only just gotten started.

I wonder how biblical greats like Noah and Methuselah so greatly exceeded what has now become our rather short expiration date?  One thing is certain:  they managed to live hundreds of years a piece without the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition.

In light of our present state of cultural and spiritual deprivation globally, we might want to consider the benefits from doing without it as well.   Loin cloths might even become a fashion mainstay once more....

God forbid!

ARLO'S PARTING GIFT

Just a shade over an hour ago I had the mournful duty of taking my thirteen-year old dog, Arlo, to the vet for the last time.  I knew on Tuesday night that he was in trouble.  When an old dog whimpers at every odd move,  it is a clear indication that those carefree days of unlimited mobility and rowdy displays of affection are gone.

He had been hosting this declivitous passage for a few months having lost his hearing in early fall with his eyesight in close competition, and more recently, drinking copious amounts of water (which is usually a sign of kidney failure in old dogs); but until the other night, he was not in any perceivable pain, had a healthy appetite and a frequently wagging tail.

So I let him be and merely observed.

However, I knew this day was not long off and began preparing myself for its arrival in small ways; one being to continually absorb the reality that already he was no longer the dog I had weaned on a bottle from two weeks old and the one who, ever since, has rarely left my side.

He could no longer hear me so that the comforting cooing from me to him and eager responsiveness from him to me was no longer possible.  Often he would stare off into nothingness looking tense and concerned, which made me think how lonely and afraid he must be without the use of all his natural instincts and senses.  But he how slept a lot.

So I let him be and merely observed.

It is a little surprising to me that I am right now able to sit here calmly without tears and put this into words, and I know my family was worried about how I was going to handle this day when it came.  This dog had been my dog and mine alone for all these years and was the last of our dogs to have made the journey with us from Connecticut through our years in Arizona and finally to our present home in Missouri.  He was the last readily visible and living link to those other parts of my life and a part of every event from the mundane to the miraculous for well over a decade.  He was my loyal buddy and my constant companion and pal.  He was MY dog.

He was also the most difficult, high-strung, neurotic, hyper-attached and temperamental dogs I have ever owned in my entire life; destroying countless pieces of furniture and assorted objects when he was young; utterly and completely losing all composure during thunderstorms and otherwise windy, unpleasant weather days; and utilizing the unfortunate defense strategy of nipping or biting when feeling threatened or fearful.  Unfortunately, the latter was a trait he never outgrew (his recent deafness ended the thunderstorm hysteria) and which was lately made more of a conspicuous problem commensurate to his increasing level of discomfort.  It could only get worse.

But I let him be and merely observed.

The joke had always been that Arlo had bitten everyone in the family except for me.  The joke can now be abandoned.

This morning after he had been initially sedated, with his warm, limp body draped across my lap as we both sat on the floor of the examination room, the vet and her assistant came in to shave his back leg and apply the final dose that would ultimately lift him out of all his pain.

In those wrenching and protracted minutes before their return to the room,  I remained motionless; stroking the side of his old mutt face, studded with the white hairs of a useful passage.  Right then within my body I held twelve years of gratitude, elation, forgiveness and sorrow bound up like padded wounds in the soft void of my next breath; so that my breathing, now thin and shallow, was in perfect measure a  mirror of his own.  Yet in every other way I was doing as I had always done at every point of rest or moment of quiet for longer than time could understand; silently loving my good dog.

And as the assistant gently reached for the old boy's hind leg to prepare it this final step, without warning and in a state of typical, neurotic, Arlo panic with the defensive drive of a cornered beast, he frantically lifted his head and clamped down full and hard on the thumb of my hand that had yet to cease its furtive caresses.

He bequeathed me a stunning blood-blister bruise on the nail side, a neat little puncture wound on the other and a royal throbbing pain that now extends from my thumb wrapping around my wrist, down my arm and continues to this very moment.

Of course, he had no idea that it was me he was attempting to censure or even precisely what he was doing, but in some small way the visceral and excruciating nature of his parting gift has made it a little bit easier for me to sit here now and remember the tension and challenges loving this dog presented; which, in turn, has given me a slight respite from the bellowed suffering of pure, unadulterated grief.  As much as I adored him and as devoted as he was to me and to my every movement; it has also been thirteen years of apprehension wondering, "Who will Arlo attempt to bite next?"; particularly when someone came to the front door.

I suppose my worn little mongrel did me a favor by yielding to his neurosis one last time and leaving me with an aching, searing reminder that sometimes death brings with it a mixed blessing:  I have released him from a lifetime of anxiety and a dotage of pain and infirmities; he has released me from perpetual worry and the underlying stress attendant to the ownership of such an unpredictable animal.  The pain of injury to my wounded thumb has blessedly mitigated some of the pain of loss in my temporarily unconsolable heart.

All these thoughts gelled like a healing emotional balm in my mind as I continued to cradle Arlo's head in my lap and wait for the second sedative injection to take effect.  (It was decided after the biting that this was the next best course of action.  Anything was better than a muzzle.)

And by the time the final injection was given, what had first been for me a nearly uncontrollable outpouring of raw grief and bottomless despair had now become a bloom of great calm and gratitude for his long years of devotion, and a willingness to accept the loss of him while at the same time embrace the unrestrained freedom each of us would now own.  It was his parting gift to me at the perfect time.

So I let him be and merely observed.

CRUCIBLE ADDENDUM

The sun was shining most of the day today and it brought a heartening current of promise to probably just about everyone sharing it.  I know it did to me.  Who doesn't welcome the spring equinox and that cat-stretch of daylight hours yawning deep into evening giving us all more time to see and to remember why we are alive?

I've backed off the blog for a day or two in deference to the fragile and deeply personal content of my last entry.  Between the tears and caustic burn of recounting even those cursory details about my son's journey and the woefully intensive effort to respectfully, honestly and gracefully say all that needed to be said with as much perfection as I could muster; the whole process exceeded ten hours, concluding just before midnight.

For the following two days, Easter Sunday and yesterday, I was played and felt almost hollowed out.  It wasn't the dark kind of hollow where apathy reigns.  It was the blissfully exhausting hollow after a mighty purging, and I just wanted to remain quiet for as long as possible.

I also wanted to let that post stand all on it's own for a time; undisturbed and available.

But yesterday a wonderful thing happened.

About four weeks ago I decided to install a stat counter on the blog.  My logic being that it would help motivate me to keep writing if I could actually see and prove that my mother did, indeed, show up every few days to read it.

Of course, I am being somewhat facetious because I know that there are others besides my mom who, for reasons either of curiosity, accident or boredom, do occasionally sweep in and get that much-needed eye-lulling to put them right off to sleep sans any bothersome prescriptions.  As I have said before, I will take anyone I can get.

So, what happened yesterday was nothing short of remarkable as well as ineffably touching.

I began this literary compositional jouncing eight weeks ago and have been faithfully posting an entry about every two days.  I don't know how many or how few readers showed up at the start, but I do know that since I've installed the counter, I average about eighteen to twenty readers a day on slow days, and up to forty or more on holidays and Sundays.  (I've discovered that boredom is universal on Sunday nights.)

I posted the entry about Griffin in the wee hours of Sunday morning.  By ten o'clock Easter morning already twenty-six people had read it.  By the end of the day, forty-seven.

On Sunday evening I received a facebook message from a very sweet and sincere friend of Griffin's from high school telling me that she had re-posted my blog about him on her facebook page and asked if that was alright.  She now teaches in the same town where she and Griffin attended high school and said that there is an enormous heroin problem among the teens there.  She went on to say that by giving the drug abuse problem a 'face' in a person many in this small town knew, it might carry more of an impact.   She also told me that within minutes of re-posting the entry she began receiving emails and phone calls from his old friends who wanted his address so they could write him and send words of encouragement.

Yesterday one-hundred and eight people from all across the country had read that blog.  Of course, I assume that most of these are friends of Griffin's and I am deeply moved by their interest in and support for him after all these years.

As fate would have it, he also phoned me yesterday evening and I was able to share with him the reaction of his friends to his story.  I could hear the soft and lightly broken strain in his voice as he expressed both his shock and his gratitude, and he said, "  Oh brother.  Well, even though it is humiliating;  if my mistakes can help somebody else, I think it is worth telling.  I plan on telling it a lot when I am able to get on with my life."

In spite of everything, Griffin continues to have hope and embrace his gifted and healing sense of humor.  I received a letter from him the other day and will share a part of it, which illustrates this:


I am writing this because, due to the stunningly high collective I.Q. of the general populous of the **** County Jail inmates, a few Einsteins got our tier locked-down for the rest of the day.  Hence, no phone calls, T.V., Pinochle or basketball; for they thought it a wonderful idea to steal some delicious lemon cookies off of a tray at dinner.  
Anyway, this has now become my life; feeling like the alpha male in some paleolithic-era society.  Next up for my band of cro-mags is 'fire', then perhaps, 'the wheel!'
Yes, it is like this.  I know that I have no one to blame but myself, so I try hard to find the humor in whatever I can. 
Maybe I will compose a novel of sorts about my trials and tribulations at the various different county jails I have tenured.
It would be a great tragi-comedy......"


The rest of the letter was much more humorous, however, it revolved around a description of an exchange between himself, a friend and one of the less than brilliant guards whose name figures prominently in and is a necessary component of the story; so it will have to remain untold here.

But I am sharing a bit of him in his own voice for those of you who 'looked in' on him yesterday and would remember and enjoy a taste of the Griffin who is winning his way back.  Thank you for caring and please don't give up on him.  Don't judge or give up on anyone in his position.  There is always a person behind the addict and usually there are also a whole lot of small hurts that stew together to yield the depraved feast of addiction.  And while an addict is not a victim in the sense that they consciously choose to take the first step down that road, the fact is that it is a road open to the good and bad alike.

I think it is worth remembering that there are more good people who do bad things as a result of their addictions than bad people who become addicts because it feels good.

Onward and upward................

THE CRUCIBLE OF TRUTH

Whether or not you are religious, Easter time holds the same promises for everyone:  It holds the promise of renewal, the promise of hope and the promise of new beginnings; and within very the season it inhabits, it holds the evidence of survival and the promise of new life.  No matter how long or harsh the winter has been, there comes the lush transfiguration in the organic countenance of the planet to make us all feel strengthened and lighter.

Now while courage and renewal are not necessarily synonymous, there is a level at which they are required to conjoin if true resurrection is to be the result.  It is a level where honesty prevails and where there are no dark corners; a level that reveals the most vulnerable truths about ourselves and our lives and which is also as utterly and devastatingly terrifying as it necessarily and profoundly liberating.

It is the level that nails you to the cross.

Up until now in this spiritual, silly, narcissistic, humorous, indulgent, querying and candid blog-journey; I've skillfully (subjective opinion) danced around an area of my life that in many ways is my life but for reasons that will become obvious to any reader shortly, has remained deep in the soft, holding cell at the frayed and care-worn center of my heart.

If you go there, you will find every cell, fiber and microcosmic tissue throbbing harmoniously with the unifying thrust of unconditional love protecting the essence, image of and ultimate hope for my son, Griffin.

My son is a drug addict and has been so in one degree or form since he was about eighteen years old.   In late August he celebrated his twenty-ninth birthday under the same conditions in which he has celebrated all but one of his birthdays since 2007:  as an inmate in a state correctional facility.

Given that he is a man of extremely high intelligence, he managed to fund his addiction by a cleverly-executed scheme of prescription fraud.  This is what he was sentenced for.  Again.

The first time around he spent eighteen months at different correctional facilities in two states and several counties satisfying the various infractions in each; but at no time in any facility did he receive any sort of rehabilitative counseling or aid.  None.  And they wonder why recidivism is so high.

Two years ago in the pre-dawn hours of Halloween he was released from the county jail, yet just over one year later he was on his way back in.  For the first few months he was doing well, but over time as those same buttons were being pushed and still without  any recourse to viable coping methods, he slowly retreated to the only form of consolation and escape that he has known:  prescription pain medication.

Griffin is a charming guy; a massive charming guy standing nearly six foot six and weighing in around three-hundred and sixty pounds.  He was a huge baby and a huge child, although a very congenial and loquacious one and I would often have to warn him not to speak to every single person, down every single isle, about every single thing, every single time we entered the Supermarket.

Because of his size people assumed he was always much older than he was, which put a certain amount of pressure on him from a young age.  When people assume you are five and yet you behave as though you are two and a half, they tend to draw some unflattering conclusions about your emotional maturity and mental capacity and unfortunately, many had no reservations about voicing their asinine opinions and observations right in front of us.

People can bring astoundingly damaging energy to the function of opinion.


If Griffin has one weakness of character, it would be his incessant desire to please and an even greater need to be loved and admired.  He is a Leo, after all.  But for as far back as he was aware, he was not able to live up to those desires, and the harder he tried, the more abjectly he would fail.

When he was very young, his peers were afraid of him due to his massive size and exuberance and had a tendency to run from him.  Bringing him to the nursery school playground would sometimes evoke  scenes similar to the ones where Godzilla enters Tokyo and sends diminutive Japanese denizens scrambling frantically in every direction.

 As he grew and the other kids realized that he in no way regarded his physical presence as an advantage and a tool of intimidation, they took the opposite position and he became the goat.  He was a sweet, affable, sometimes gullible and gentle giant; just what the predatory types like to consume whole.  Nothing makes a small bully feel more empowered than by taking a larger kid down.

He played baseball and basketball in elementary and middle schools and excelled at both; especially baseball where he still holds the record for home runs hit clean out of the local ballpark and into the woods.  But because his size so greatly exceeded the height and weight requirements of the Pop Warner Football league, he was not able to participate in the one sport most suited to his monolithic frame.

That all changed when he reached high school.

By this time, too, he was so eager to find peer acceptance that I do believe he would have taken up wing-walking or bull running if it would have earned him their regard.  But he didn't have to do anything that risky.  All he had to do was to be big, put on a helmet and knock people down on the football field; simple as that, and he did so readily.

Suddenly, he was a hero and with his brilliant mind, gregarious nature and quick humor he quickly became one of the most popular kids in school.  However, within his own mind absolution did not fully come and the reality of his earlier years kept him a prisoner of disbelief and insecurity and feeling as though he still needed to be continually vigilant in his quest to please or he might just as suddenly find himself once more the target instead of the bullet.

But for the time being he was the largest bullet any high school coach in the history of the school had ever seen.  Not only that be he was fast, and scouts from colleges all across the country were coming to take a gander.  He was a mammoth,  treasured, testosterone-fueled commodity.

So, when he hurt his shoulder during a fall practice in his senior year and the team doctor (who had formerly been so for a professional football team in another state) began prescribing him injections of steroids and pain medications, the ramifications escaped our notice.

Sadly, they didn't escape Griffin's.  What these jock-cocktails provided most was a steady emotional lift with an undercurrent of invincibility and euphoria.  He was happy and a part of the team, only now if anyone didn't like him, he didn't care - not consciously anyway.  What he gradually discovered was that as long as he was under the influence of these substances, he felt good about himself.

Then, when news of Griffin's bad shoulder was leaked to the colleges courting him, one by one they dropped their offers and as the offers stopped, so did the attention.  By graduation day the glory days had ended, but not his dependency on the glory drugs.

In the years after high school I watched my son disappear.  He had a few unsuccessful attempts at college, culinary school and a variety of fairly respectable jobs but all were undermined by his increasingly insatiable dependency on chasing happy. 


 It wasn't happiness he was after.  Happiness is a state of being; a subjective emotion that wraps around our outlook like a sacred ribbon around our best day.  Griffin was chasing some sort of safe boxed thing:  a stagnant puddle of compartmentalized indifference;  a chunk of calm ringed by bursts of artificial joy;  a hollow parody of self-confidence.  He had never fully known happiness and the congenial rush from trustworthy peer support, so he didn't really know what to look for.

Of course, over time all the concomitant ills of addiction came into play:  the nearly pathological lying, stealing,  manipulating, chronic irresponsibility and connivance.  He was no longer recognizable by habit or attitude and after a couple of suicide attempts, neither were we.

Our lives had been voluntarily hijacked because we could not turn away and all that we had emotionally, financially and prayerfully went into trying to help him find his way to a point of peace and a place where he could start over.

Ultimately, only Griffin can heal Griffin, and for a long time that did not seem as though it was ever going to happen.  No matter how sincere his wish nor valiant his efforts, without long-term professional rehabilitative help, the healing would not take place and all the half-starts and nearly-theres were simply not good enough.

I've discovered that if a pattern continues long enough and you are able to fool yourself into believing that you are in control while in reality you are playing both sides of the game, eventually you will become buried by not only your addiction but by your deception, as well.  Soon every single out-breath you release becomes toxic until nothing whole and good can stand in your presence and those who try to do so either become victims of your declivitous game at self-destruction or they become casualties of your indifference to anything except satisfying your pharmaceutical craving.

But as anyone knows who has by fate or circumstance been beguiled into courting hopelessness, there really is no such thing and the saying, "Where there is life, there is hope." could not be more true or more worth believing.

Griffin has been incarcerated this time around since early December; and while the deep sorrow attendant to his situation as a recidivist addict and offender and the purgatorial consequences of his actions never leaves me for one minute, I can honestly say that at this moment I am not only filled with hope for his recovery, but I am filled with pride as well.  I am also filled with great happiness because he has been accepted for admission to the two-year inmate drug rehab program and will finally get the intensive help he needs and deserves.

He is ready for it now.  For the first time he is facing and assuming full responsibility for everything he has done to bring about his present fate.  This may not sound like much, but denial is a huge part of addiction, and I have heard him blame everyone but the Pope for his problems in the past.

I still grapple with ragged grief over the situation in general and missing him in particular.  On my visits I am not able to hug or hold him or come any closer then the bullet proof glass partition will accommodate and our conversations are over a phone receiver.  We have come to greet and leave one another with the ritual of pressing our hands together and matching them up against the glass that separates us.  Even though he is a man, his giant hand remains that of my child and as it engulfs and extends well beyond the silhouette of my own, I am reminded only of the corresponding enormity of his great and loving heart.

 But his heart suffers physically now, too.   As a result of his years of excessive abuse, he has developed cardiac arrhythmia and has already had two mild heart attacks; one before he was taken into custody and another a couple of weeks ago.  The concern for his health has driven me to my knees more than once and keeps me firmly grounded in prayer and awake deep into the night with predictable regularity as I barter with God and the angels and any celestial intercessor who will listen for the restored health of his body and his soul.

 And, of course,  there is still the pathetic ignorance and prejudice from people who routinely expose their profound insensitivity by malicious gossip and impudent judgments all based on their smug belief that because it has never happened to them or to one of their kids, they are immune from and above all moral prosecution for their craven tongues and are righteously defended in the eyes of the world and of their God.

Sadly, they pass this loathsome trait down to their children as my daughter experienced the other day at her job as a hostess in a local restaurant when the son of a former friend of mine entered with a buddy.  He recognized my daughter and they chatted offhandedly as she seated them.  But as he was leaving, he stopped at her station by the door and inquired about Griffin.

Being the honest soul she is, she told him the truth about her brother's incarceration adding also that we were very encouraged because this time he was finally going to get help for his problem.  He responded in full voice and without the slightest compunction that he stood also in front of her supervisor and co-workers and said, "Your brother is a real scum bag.  No offense."

No offense?

She was quite naturally stunned and felt a retort was out of the question because she was at work, so she said nothing but goodbye.  Then she fell into tears.  Her boss was more than understanding as were those co-workers within earshot, and they all rallied round her until she regained her composure promising covert retribution on her behalf should he ever show his face there again.

Composure, as a form of emotional rebounding, is something that I have come to master over the years with frightening acuity and could probably teach a college-level course on both the subject and the techniques.  It is only unfortunate in that it has become a necessity rather than a choice.

For a long time I could not look at a ball field or a large boy or a young family in church or any such reminders without it bringing my son into my thoughts with such searing regret, guilt, longing and shame that I could barely breath let alone hold back my emotions.

But with the years came strength and also a resolve not to let the darkest aspects of this lesson infect the rest of my hope with that kind of fruitless anguish.  Slowly, I developed a strategy of disengaging when these black holes were opened and to defer my reaction until a more private circumstance afforded me the opportunity to express my anguished heart.

What other productive options do I have?

I am committed to love and lift my magnificent son out of this wretched pit of abuse, self-sabotage and transgression just as he did for me.

Twenty-seven years ago I was spiraling out of control on a chemical vortex of drugs and super-charged apathy after leaving a grossly ill-conceived but blessedly brief, nine-month-long marriage of violence and abuse.

At twenty-five years old and in the aftermath of yet another one of my many compendious failures, I had no hope and saw few options and had returned to the derelict risk-taking of my teens with brash abandon and little regard as to whether I lived or died.

That is a pathetic tale all it's own, but the fact is that in the throes of this crash-test of my sanity, I became pregnant and from the moment this reality became known to me, so did another life-saving conception.  The birth of PURPOSE.  Suddenly, I had a goal and a purpose and a reason to rededicate myself to seeking the transcendent in life, and I named him Griffin.

Today my son and I have a victory to chase and there is nothing in heaven or in hell that is going to prevent me from finishing this formidable journey with him.

And as for those with distain who sneer and try to hold my son down in the muck of their pond-scum judgment, shame on you!

Oftentimes the most magnificent recreations are made of shame and ash.  This Griffin will soar again.