Spy, Soldier, Star

Many people are of the impression that being a creative type is the same thing as being a showy performer or an eccentric. It's true that many performers and eccentrics are creative, but none of these three things need to intersect in a Venn Diagram of exclusivity. Personality is never a prerequisite for being creative.

Even the most extroverted of people know that often the best way to find what you need for your creative endeavors is to be unobtrusive and to listen carefully for specifics. In general, people want someone to hear their experiences, their viewpoints, and their stories. It's true that many of us keep our stories hidden, like carefully pressed flowers in a heavy book. We preserve ourselves within a safer context of someone else's story. But eventually, with enough security, a person will open up to their page. Just keep listening and you will be given a map of the human soul.

Here is an example. One day, I'm sitting in a coffee shop in the city of Seattle. I was waiting to meet someone and had my laptop with me and open, trying to think of something to write about. If I had earnestly kept myself focused on trying, I would have missed out on the following:

One in a series of "American Coffee Shops" by Karen Jiyun Sung via www.behance.net

A pair of somewhat scruffy older gentlemen sat at the table beside me in a tight window space that felt like we were all at the same table with barely any room between. I was trying to create a wall of privacy by staring fixedly at my screen, and continued to click and type some vacant words, sipping my coffee as quietly as I could.

But sometimes the universe wakes you up and hands you a gem. The exchange between these two men is what I call "Bob and Munger", even though the conversation went far beyond whatever it was that Munger was trying to impress upon Bob. I've set the scene for you. Now imagine that Bob is reading a newspaper and not looking at Munger, who is closest to me, the whole time. This doesn't faze Munger in the least, and caffeine is fueling him.

Munger: You are a wonderful human being, Bob.

Bob seems to ignore him, attending to his coffee, instead. But my atennae are instantly primed. Munger presses on.

M: You are a wonderful human being.

Bob says nothing, Munger waits a beat, and I type nonsense words more slowly, now for a different reason. I am in spy mode.

Munger: But you let power go to your head. Everybody loved you before you became manager.

Bob remains silent, squinting intently at the paper. I am holding my cup to my lips to hide any distracting expression on my face and also to prevent a rattle into the saucer which might break the spell.

Munger: It was never you and me. You were a Greek and you were among the Romans. You had a bunch of Romans living down there. But you and me were a couple of Greeks. In Rome you gotta do like the Romans. (Pause). But you and me were a couple of Greeks.

Bob still doesn't respond, and I am guessing that these two must have known each other in some sort of crowded and rough situation-- a jail? a halfway house? a barracks? a sports team? a sweatshop of telemarketers? Whatever it was, these men now have a faded and dusty aura, like ashen tree trunks or a frayed rope. They are as far from two Greek philosophers reclining upon marble steps in white togas as are two city dogs that run wild and have found the luck of a good bone to chew, which is a sunny window, a coffee and a paper. But Bob is the strong silent type, apparently, so Munger gives up his tack and suddenly turns his attention to me. The jig is up.

M: Oh, you're on the computer, too.

I have no idea what he means by this. I don't know who else he means by "too" or what "being on" the computer means, either. I soon learn that "on the computer" means, being featured somewhere on the web or having a commercial presence there.

M: (To me, pointedly) My brother is the second oldest living horse trainer from WW2.

He says the letters, not the words "world war". Now Bob looks up and cuts his eyes to me, meriting this new topic with speech.

Bob: (Clearly and loudly) His name is Munger.

I don't know if this is a first name or last name, but I just nod pleasantly. This fragment of information has now given me a name for the man next to me, opposite Bob. I wait for more, because once the name of the story is given, it is about to be told.

Munger: My sister is a writer and they're both on the computer.

Bob: She's even more famous than Munger.

Bob is referring to Munger the horse trainer, but I still don't know anything about this Munger beside me, the Unknown, the Greek, who apparently makes a habit of telling people with open laptops about his family.

M: She is all over the world. Her books are all over the world. (He circumnavigates in the air with his hand). But you can get her on the computer.

He carefully spells out a website, jabbing his finger at a keyboard in the air in front of him.

M: W,W,W… dot… Book… b… o…o… k… talk… t…a…l…k dot… com. Book talk dot com.

Vintage illustration by Gil Everens

I smile and lamely begin to to type this address into the search bar to "get her", but I don't know her name, or more likely, her pen name. Seeing my hesitation, he waves his hand at everything he has just said.

Munger: She's retired now. She wrote romance novels. She lives in Miami Beach.

Clearly, where she now lives is a case closed for him, shutting him down, choosing not to elaborate. He stopped talking completely, pulling the bill of his cap down, closing his huge Book of Siblings with nothing more to say about himself.

I sat in the sudden stillness, feeling like I had been let into and then left alone in a dusty attic, wanting more explanation, but also not wanting more explanation, not sure of what I had just overheard and been drawn into. But like a gem, the interaction was completely formed, self-contained, and glowing within itself. I had been given all I needed.

Months later, in a similarly quiet moment, I did a search for "horse trainer WW2 Munger" and up comes this headline, published in the Seattle Times in 2009:

"Don Munger, 85, gets through the horrors of World War II by continuing to train and breed horses"

As I read, all I can think is that this is Seabiscuit meets Unbroken, both books written by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a nexus of these two true stories, found in yet a third man.

Photo image: Seattle Times, August 13, 2009

If the scene of Bob and Munger, and their unknown past as Greeks among Romans wasn't enough, then I am further gifted with the story of Don Munger, whose life has inspired many, both around and beyond the world of thoroughbreds and horse racing. But right at the end of the article, much like his younger brother, he shares his own carefully kept gem with anyone who pays attention:

“One thing about the war, it makes you appreciate things. You appreciate life, and everything involved with it,” he said. “You don’t appreciate things until you don’t have them, and when you almost lose your life.

"On Guadalcanal in 1943, I was reading an old Reader's Digest, and there was a little phrase in there: 'The way to love something is to realize it may be lost.' And that impressed me and I wrote it on my little stationery box. It's still in my sea bag, and I've always remembered that."

Gleaming inside that little box, is the word "may" because it suggests that we may not have lost something beloved. Sometimes there is a way forward. The word "may", along with survival, was an allowance given to Don Munger to take whatever was crushed and pressed down in the misery of war and to give it a new expression in a work. In his case, it was expressed in his love of horses. That is re-creation at its most raw and at its finest.

To me, Munger the Unknown does his own miniature creations, as limited as his scope might be. He is an eccentric and a performer, but not simply to be a clown for attention. He is the Holy Fool who loves his siblings and carries them with him in his own seabag, bringing them out of their stationery box to anyone who might want to read about them. He might feel compressed and dried out in comparison to them, but he transforms himself when he expresses them. He gave them to me freely and openly even while I was in spy mode, and in the light of day.

Neither he nor I are brave soldiers or horse trainers or world-renown romance novelists living in Miami Beach. We're pretty much nobodies in the roar of the world, but no less in love with it, as obscure Greeks among the Romans. As the famous Oscar Wilde said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." And sometimes the stars are sitting right alongside us, emerging in the ordinary daylight.

Illustration: "Seattle Starry Night Masterpiece" 2013 by Mrs. Morris' First and Second Grade Classes, Bear Creek Elementary Woodinville, WA, Mini-canvasses mounted on wooden frame