Sabotage

A journey of nearly thirty-nine years had led them to a back porch shop in Pennslobovia. One going out of his mind from the struggle to find work and the other cursing the work he had. On the surface, they couldn't be in more different circumstances but they had one very, vital thing in common.

Male pattern baldness.

Well, yes, they had that in common but that wasn't...

They were both standing on the porch in Pennslobovia.

Well, yes, that's technically true too but not germane to the top...

They were both drinking coffee.

No. Haha, gotcha there, the one had finished his already.

They were both coffee drinkers.

Sigh, yes, they both drank coffee. They both had been struck with male pattern baldness, were standing on a porch in Pennslobovia and they both enjoyed a good cup of coffee or four. May i continue now that you've totally derailed my point?

Yup.

Ahem! Aside from all of those scintillating similarities, they had one other thing in common: they were both. being. poisoned.

Dun-DAH! What? It needed a dramatic emphasis.

Don't you have some traffic you could be playing in? Carrying on. Right. Poisoned. Not physically mind you, though living in Pennslobovia that's always a possibility too. But it's not their corporeal tissue that was effected but the ...

Corporal Who now?

Corporeal Tissue, their physical bodies.

Then why didn't you just say "bodies?"

Because i liked the phrase "corporeal tissue!" It's called a vocabulary.

It's called being a pretentious peckerwood.

Look you!

Are you gonna tell us what was being poisoned or what?

Are you going to stop interrupting?

Are you gonna use real words?

Deep cleansing breath. No, it was not their bodies that were being poisoned. It was their work.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. You said one of them was struggling to look for work.

Indeed.

Now you say his work was being poisoned.

i have.

You're gonna have to explain that to me.

i'm shocked. Work, is a constant. Whatever has been put before you to do at that moment is your work. Changing a baby; building a desk; helping a little, old lady find her taxes; studying for a test; looking for a job; talking to a friend on the phone; drawing a comic strip or writing a blog. It's all the job at hand. Even lying down to rest is the work at hand at that given moment. So, in a sense, work and the present moment are synonyms.

Okay, so work = now.

Precisely.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whenever, that's your work.

Um, yes.

The here and now. Present tense. Talking to you, that's my job.

And a smashing one you're doing too.

And these bums on the back porch, their jobs were getting poisoned.

So, i've said.

Not very quickly, you gotta way of getting off point, if you know what i mean. Too easily distracted.

Plotting murder will do that. As i was saying! They were both frustrated and angry, they were both dissatisfied with where their lives were at, what they had become, what they were doing. The one, that he was thirty-eight and had no job or prospects and was studying for a licensing test in a field he wasn't sure would pan out. The other, that he was thirty-eight, wanted to be doing something else but was stuck skinning his knuckles and filling his eyes with sawdust doing something he had no interest in doing. Both had something to do: study for an exam; build a desk but they could not focus on those simple tasks and even disdained them because their minds kept trying to do someone else's job.

Someone else's job? Whose?

God's. You see, they could not focus or enjoy the simple tasks they'd been given because they were trying to do God's job. To force the future into clarity. To predict and even control the outcome of their work. They wanted assurances they did not have instead of letting God be God and trusting Him and His promises.

Hmmm, i think you're reaching on that one, buddy.

It was as if they were given a thought to convey and some rude, unpleasant smelling, voice in their heads kept interrupting and agitating and sabotaging the natural flow.

Yeah, you're gonna need a better analogy.

If only.

The trial of the trails.

"So what's your plan?" said Mynnie.

"Plan? There ain't no "plan!"" answered the Pigkiller.

The first is a quote from my wife at lunch the other day. i was listlessly working my whip upon the dry skeleton of a long dead dray and she was rather appropriately fed up. She wanted to know what i was going to do to get out of my rut.

Well wouldn't we all. That's where one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite genre's comes into play. Mad Max was good for something.

In the meantime, i've decided to put some of my new found coloring gifts to use and have started a daily comic strip. For those three or two of you who didn't already know, it's called the Rabbit Trails. If you did already know, then there's nothing to see here, about your lives citizens. Move along, move along.

My Emergency Response Plan

"Is this the end of the world?"

My wife, Mynnie, asked me that when the Towers fell back in the '01. Obviously the world kept spinning. Some Yak herder somewhere woke up on September 12, scratched his butt and made the tea over the dung fire the same way he always did and never heard nor probably cared too much that some fools flew some planes into some buildings on the other side of the ball. But i don't think my wife thought the Towers were going to fall on all of us. She probably meant, is this how the end of the world starts?

A better way of saying it may be, "Is this the end of life as we've known it?" Does this event signal a larger change? It's an understandable question. Folks look at all the natural disasters in the world, the growing power of cyclones and hurricanes, the volcanic, seismic and subversive activity. The growing political unrest in... um...everywhere and they begin to worry that their comfortable little petroleum fueled, latté driven lives might be about to veer off into the bridge abutment of calamity. Time was when Damocles' sword was made of Mutually Assured Nuclear Annihilation. Now it seems that while we were fretting with one eye on the sky, Pestilence, Famine and War were salting the ground under our feet. If one were to open their hearts to fear, it feels as if we're just one economic crisis away from a global meltdown and there doesn't seem to be enough seawater to pour on the rods.

So what do we do? Live in fear? Live in denial? Eat, drink and pinch Mary for tomorrow we die?

i suppose we could and i feel sure many will, just as they did moments before the waters rose around the Ark or the fiery hail fell on the streets of Sodom but i would like to suggest a better emergency preparedness plan:

1. Pray for guidance, strength and mercy
2. Trust that you'll get it
3. Love God with all your heart, mind and soul
4. Love your neighbor as yourself

i'm told by a fairly reliable source that if you use this plan, even if you die you will find eternal life.

Whuchoo talkin' 'bout, Aunt Linda?

"What a great life you have!!! You keep us all smiling!!!"

This is a quote via Facebook from my Aunt Linda. It made me make that snorting sound you do when you try to laugh at a moment of surprise. Intake and exhalation hit each other in the ol' windpipe and create friction that explodes out the sinuses. An internal thunderstorm of the nose i suppose.

Now i could go one of two directions with this quote. The first would be to point out how the faceless quality of the interwebs allows us to more completely brick up a false front to our true selves. That is, i'm afraid, how i responded immediately on the thread. It's a quick, thoughtless, knee jerk reaction, not without a grain of truth but like a clam strip, it's mostly fat-soaked breading.

For everything meine Tante said was true. Folk really do seem to get a kick out of my blither. i don't claim to understand it but i'd be a liar to pretend to ignore it. What's more, aside from getting people to think a little, mostly about their relationship with God, making them smile is a genuine goal of mine. So gimme the flightsuit and the banner so i can thumbs-up to a big "Mission Accomplished!" Meanwhile, the war goes on.

It's the first part of the quote that shocked me really. Anyone who's subjected themselves to the horror of this blog could attest, just prior to plucking their own eyes out, that i am generally a miserable wretch. Take this random comment from a fellow named Tige:

"Hey there. Came by your post accidentally. Your writing is funny. That's great. You are also a moper. Not so great. "

See, you don't even have to be a follower.

"What a great life you have!!!" Three exclamation points seem to put it over the top but no, it's that true! Aunt Linda is absolutely correct. And what's more, it's true for all of us. God gave us these lives and they are good. That's not to say that the circumstances are always fun or easy or pleasing or even generally-amusing-if-you-squint-at-it-just-right, but that's not what "good" means. i don't actually know what good means but i know it's got more in common with "beautiful" and "loved" than "happy." Circumstances are weather. They are the seas in which we sail, but they have no bearing on whether or not the ship is good. The ship is good! The sea is good. The weather, may suck today and be ideal tomorrow but the sailing is good.

Now, why did the same guy who made the ship, make the weather suck so often? Ahhhh. There's the rub, eh? i have no idea. No, that's not true, i have ideas but lack the hubris to spout them. But i will hint them, i have arrogance enough for that. i don't think i ever learned anything insightful, significant or life changing; i don't believe that the person i am and the person i am becoming would be if my life were smooth sailing through breezy, sunny, summer days. i don't think i would have learned to trust, believe and depend on my savior if i never knew i needed saving. i don't think i would have ever lived if i hadn't shot the rapids and wondered if i was going to die. Our God is a God of resurrection, that's how He works. He brings about new life through death...

...but you gotta die first.

Weeds and warts.

So, if you read yesterday's post, you may very well be wondering, "what the flux was that?" And if you haven't read yesterday's post and you continue to read today's, you will definitely be wondering, "what the hole is this???" For those of you who read it though and are sticking with me, i doubt your sanity but i appreciate the company. It is my sincere but dubious desire that this be of some benefit to y'all and not just gratuitous introspection on my part.

For me, it's not enough to identify bad habits and catalog undesirable personality quirks. i have to dig at the reasons for them, the roots if you will. There's an element of compulsion to this that i get from my mother (a topic for another day, foreshadowing!) but there is also a rationality to it. Weeds and warts don't die if you just lop off the tops. They just sprout up again and again. You have to get down to the ugly and the painful. True change don't come easy or without dirt and blood under the fingernails. So roll up the sleeves and cauterize the razor knife, we're going in!

It's well documented, add some nauseum here, about how i hate my work. Many of my frequent bouts of despair come from the pointless toil i find myself about day after day. i don't think i'm unique in this, only in the fell depths of desperation, the dank, dark dungeon of depression over this topic do i find myself often the lone, barely animated corpse chained to the wall. Others seem more adapted to it. More able to cope, to self medicate, to find relief in American Idol, solace in video games, palliation in pubs and live more or less contented lives. Again, the diagnosis of "thinking too much" rears its head. Is this the solution? Do i somehow learn how to turn off my mind? Put a bottle in my head and pull the trigger? (foreshadow again) Are those my only choices, thunkard or drunkard? Is self destruction the only road and the only true choice the mode of transport?

Yes, yes it is. That, in a nutshell, is life as i see it.

But. The shell is a peanut shell. There are two nuts in it. A bleak nut AND a "but" nut. We'll get to the butnut later. i think an explanation for yesterday is in order. That description of my childhood is not all encompassing. i have plenty more of sizzling summer days on the front porch, playing quietly in my room, saturday morning cartoons in feety pajamas that i could cough up upon a cross examiner's pinstripes should the need arise. My life is not a sorry tale of misery and woe, i just play Woe in the upcoming teevee series. i showed you that exhibit because it flashes before my mind often. A smell, a sound or a distinct lack of sound will dredge it up and i'm there again. Trapped. Stifled. Able to see home but not touch it.

That, i think, is a large part of why i hate my existence as i know it. So much of my time is spent in places i don't wanna be, doing things i don't wanna do because i have to, putting off who i want to be because other's expect it, because society as a whole says this is how it is. It may be why i prefer to work outside. It may be why i have to have a radio on while i'm working. Why i love books, fiction only please. Why i can't concentrate on my job. Why i won't concentrate on my job. Why i get so violently angry when someone or something reminds me of it when i'm not there. Why i feel so powerless. Why i love motorcycles and backpacking. Why i love open spaces but my art is confined and small. There are so many sprouts coming out of this one root that i dunno where to begin.

Which brings us back to the butnut. See, left to my own devices, in a world without a loving God who desires not just life for me but fuller life; in a world devoid of the Spirit living and working in me, i would collapse. i would eat a bullet or a bottle because i can see no point to any of this. If all life is, is doing what you have to do to survive and finding a suitable coping mechanism to forget about it afterwards and on weekends, looking forward to the next meal, next drink, next party, next vacation to get you through then thanks but no thanks, check please, forget my coat, i'm out of here. It's all meaningless, vapor, a chasing after the wind.

But. But there is grace. Grace is what unties my stomach. Grace says God don't make no junk. That He will not waste my life. i may waste some time in gratuitous introspection but He'll get me back on track if i let Him. He'll turn my ingrown love and infected gifts, my weeds and warts, into a garden. i don't know how, i just know it's true. Yes, Virginia, there is a resurrection but the Living Water is flowing now. The seed is already in you. God will make it grow. All He asks of you is that you believe.

And many days, that's pretty much all i can handle.

A moment in the museum of my muddled mind.

i gave it a week and got only one comment that said i think too much. i tried to ponder what that meant and how i could respond and then i just decided that was a little too ironic even for me. So i'm flipping last week the bird and driving on into the metaphorical sunrise of a new day. Today is all about today. New beginnings. A new gift. The present. Full of promise and vigor and clear, cold sunshine.

And that's all i got to say about that. Now lemme tell you what i thought yesterday. Well, you don't actually have to lemme. With one click of the mouse you could be somewhere constructive, like facebook or the New York Times or checking your bank statement or buying something you didn't know you couldn't live without until you saw it on Amazon. For those masochists who chose to stay with the tour group however, gird your loins and follow me into the yesterday exhibit... if you dare.

The light is filtered and faded shades of yellow like an old photograph. Or maybe it's just reflected from all the avocado green, harvest gold and burnt orange. The air is still. The dust and smoke from a cigarette in the ashtray don't seem to move. They hang, heavy and listless and their only ambition is to penetrate your nose and make you sneeze. Somewhere there is music. Low, slow and maudlin. It could be a radio or it could be the melodramatic tension of a soap opera. It's not the only sound but you wish it was for the only other thing to be heard is the ticking of a clock. It chimes every fifteen minutes but it never seems to get any later. There are no friends here. No family. Just a stranger who is paid to keep you alive until your mother gets home tonight. And that is as much as they care about you. They may offer some dry crackers or a little juice but it's only out of obligation. There may be toys but they're mostly broken ones that the stranger's brat will deign to allow you to touch. Or worse, the stranger may have all girls. If there's a window not covered with leaden draperies, you can almost see your house. You certainly know you could walk there but you are forbidden. A prisoner awaiting release. Waiting.

Waiting.

To go home.

Waiting.

To do something fun.

Waiting.

To be allowed to make noise.

Or play.

Or watch something happy on the television.

Waiting.

For an overworked mother who still has to make dinner.

But at least she loves you.

Having trouble breathing yet? Yeah, me too, let's get the flock out of the yesterday exhibit.

Whew! Okay, everyone's respiration returning to normal? Good. You may be asking, with good reason, "What the fact was that about?" i will try to explain. That was a composite memory of mine. i had many babysitters and a daycare growing up and time and distance have not dulled the experience but it has blended much of them into this exhibit i describe. The daycare differed only in that it was like being in school for three or four more hours everyday, right down to the flickering fluorescents. One with a fence around it. But i could still look through the chainlink at my house and neighborhood and the field where my friends and i used to play army and hope that mom came to get me before the sun went down but my brother and i were often the last ones to be picked up. So what does this have to do with anything?

i'll tell you later.

Egg the Coop

Late March is putting in a cameo here in February and i got a window open to the world. Just a crack but it's enough to let in the flavor and the music. i can only process information in small doses anyhow before my sense-it breakers start popping. There's an hour before my wife expects me to start working on something that someone's willing to pay me for and the Coop is open for business.

Now if only the hens would get to work. Hens here being a euphemism for brain function and inspiration. A pretty good one actually for if you could picture me standing in a poorly lit fricken coop surrounded by wide eyed hens; all of us staring at each other in awkward anticipation, you would have a darn accurate visual interpretation of my thought process. Waiting, juuuuuuust waiting for a squawk.

And then there's... not a squawk, but a cluck. A pebble sized egg. Then another. And another and another until there's nothing left to do but turn it into the dreaded, cue dramatic, tympanic laden music of doom: Bullet List. But one with a point and maybe, just maybe, there's a squawk in that:

• One man goes to work at work he hates, does not pursue and yet is constantly handed while another longs for work, works hard at finding work and is foiled at every attempt. Both pray for deliverance from the same God. What is this madness?
• Are teenagers good indicators of whether or not we are successful parents?
• On a related topic, is society as a whole, American or global, really in decline? Sort of the Are-the-old-geezers-right? kind of question.
• What am i teaching my kids about love, church, faith, career really?
• Some days i wake up and i'm just in love, it flows naturally and mysteriously. Other days i wake up and choose to be loving, despite how i may feel. Which is the truer love?
• Where is the space, what is the role of the artist/poet in these economically Hunter/Gatherer times?
• Is an adult who builds with Lego indulging in a creative hobby and artform or are they just sick?
• Do online social networks represent real community or are they an unhealthy illusion and distraction from real communities?
• Are we doomed to become our parents?
• Does anyone care?

This last one will be the first one answered. For i'm opening it up to you, oh seven followers and unknown number of lurkers, to choose the next blog post. Pick one, pick several, introduce your own, tell me to shut up. The hens and i are open to suggestion. And we're waiting. Juuuuuuuuust waiting. Staring.

The Woeful Tale of the Tailless Cat

One may go through life without a tail but that doesn't mean one has to enter death without one. Over the years i've made multiple references, most of them derogatory, about the tailless grimalkin that has haunted the Coop. Her given name was Tabitha, about the most unimaginative name i can imagine someone can give a cat. i can say that because i didn't name her. We just called her Tabby. Which always struck me as wrong because she was not a Tabby. She was a Manx. A breed from the Isle of Mann that for one reason or another do not have tails. And that's that. Which is why this is the Woeful Tale of the Tailless Cat and not the Woeful Tale of Tabitha's Tail. She was born without one and never knew no different. A fact which might, i think, have contributed to her legendary clumsiness. She tripped, fell and missed more jumps than a drunk gymnast. The only thing funnier than her athletic disasters were her attempts to regain her dignity afterwards. Which might explain why those crazy Manx Islanders bred cats without tails in the first place. Not a lot to do there i understand.

Tabby was a refugee. i don't remember how she lost her first home but we rescued her from a second party who couldn't keep her either. Tabby never played nice with other cats. She didn't fight with them, that wasn't her style. She was far too subtle for that. She just made her presence so unbearable and repugnant that the other cat retreated under a bed and wouldn't come out until Tabby was gone. i imagine her making snide comments about the other cat's breeding and socio-economic status until they cried. Kinda like an alpha cheerleader.

So she came to live with us here at the Coop and with the possible exception of her bedding down ritual (she couldn't lay down without first placidly, ripping apart whatever surface she had deemed worthy for her recline: sofa, carpet, clothing, bare leg...) she was a pleasing companion. And so the years passed like sands in the litterbox, no one sat with idle hands without a fuzzy poke in the arm...until...

Tabby's catapult from grace was almost greek in it's tragedy. Her one character flaw; her inability to suffer another cat's presence; brought about her final catastrophe. When we took in a stray kitten and nursed it back to proper intestinal function, Tabby, true to form, went about attempting to shun the kitten into submission. The kitten however was blessed with a kind of stupidity that wasn't aware of breeding and socio-economic status and was delightfully interested in playing with old cats that didn't want to play. Her tried and true strategies stymied, Tabby would have nothing to do with it... or anywhere that it had relieved itself. As the kitten was polite enough to use the litterbox, Tabby would not. Not when we provided her with her own litterbox, not when we placed a litterbox in the new areas of the Coop that she had chosen, not even after she served a disciplinary period out of doors. Tabby was incorrigible and unrepentant. So after a long heart to heart talk with her one evening, we both decided that it would be best for everyone if she chose to live outside. She also chose shot put ejection as her best exit strategy and so, with fleeting regret, i heaved her as far as i could.

She adapted quickly. Supplementing her diet of cat food with rodents, fowl and amphibians from the local watering holes. When once the boys tied a large rubber spider to a fishing pole to tease the kitten with, we got the idea to go outside on the deck and see what Tabby would do with it. It was a wild kingdom episode. As soon as the rubber spider hit the ground forty feet in front of Tabby she went into a predatory crouch. i twitched the spider once or twice and before i could react, she had crossed the span and pounced! We were properly awed. She became the bus stop companion, following the Ballyhoo down every morning and making use of idle hands. She frequented our picnics and patio sits where she would enthrone herself on the chair next to you and poke your arm to remind you what it was for.

The only thing she couldn't handle were the winters. Turns out the Isle of Mann rarely, if ever, drops below freezing and it almost never snows there. She spent them cussing the cold in Manx and making sure everyone within the sound of her Roseanne Barritone knew of her displeasure. More years passed. She lost her hearing and didn't hunt so much but cussed year round. She learned to hang just outside a window and make metronomic miau until she was fed. If we slept in on a weekend, she might even come to the deck door of our bedroom. She earned the title, Most Annoying Cat in the World and wore it proudly.

i thought, perhaps, in death she had finally deigned to be gracious and kind. i found her on a winter's day where the sun was shining and the temps were well above freezing. She appeared to be sleeping in the open with a tarp pulled up like a blanket. She could very easily have died under the brand new deck where i never would have been able to reach her but would remember she was there until the day she finished decomposing. i thought, could it be? Had she made her passing as easy as possible?

Then i started digging. The pile of stone i pulled from her grave grew larger than the pile of sloppy, wet clay i had to shake off the shovel. Dignified and subtly cruel to the end. Touché my old nemesis, touché.

Cat in a Cast Iron Tub

(Author's note: It's pretty dubious to call me an 'author' but "Writer's note" doesn't have the same ring to it.)

(Author's second and more pertinent and less pert note: This post is a reprint of an old one i wrote some years ago, back before i had a blog. Just reread it for other reasons but felt i'd like to share it with this new audience cause it still rings true. And cuz, i'm just not this random and funny anymore.)

It is without a doubt a mark of genius to be mistaken for a madman by the magazine-perusing populace. Stay your hands, dear friends! Afore you snap off that snappy snippet of snide rebuke for my assumed arrogance; allow me to elaborate. i, of the lowercase first person, am in no ways referring to my own insignificant mortal wisdom.

i refer, instead, to God. If you disagree, take it up with Him, i'm sure He'd love to hear from you.

But perhaps Messieurs, Mesdames and Mesdemoiselles you are wondering, what does this mean? What is he talking about? Why in the wild, wild world of sports is he referring to us in French titles? i assure you I have no idea. Unlike a genius, my madness is genuine. i shall endeavor to persevere however and leave you with more than a cryptic voorlooper. Life, i think some of you may agree, is tough. It is not a sport for
pansies. As a matter of fact, it's the most extreme sport there is boasting a near one hundred percent fatality rate among the participants. It's a cat in a bathtub and with each birth another mouse is pushed from the ledge and slides bum first into the fray. Yes,
i am focusing on one aspect of it, to be sure now. There are lighter moments to it. Lego’s come to mind...MnM's are good, as are in-ground pools that are someone else’s responsibility to maintain. This is by no means a complete list but more just to show you, gut Herren, Frauen und Fraulein, that i am not one sided on this issue. i am merely trying to convey, in hyperbolic metaphor that Life, as an entity, is capable of a certain peevishness that would relegate Cinderella’s stepmother, Lady Tremaine to the same category as Mrs. June Cleaver.

Granted you say, get on with it. So i shall. Into this atrium of attrition, this cauldron of corruption, this Tupperware of testiness I brought a son. Well, two actually: Churchmouse, my eldest and Rascal his carbon copy. For now, let us concern ourselves with the first.

As i gazed upon our proud little jumble of boy, a red faced, screaming, little lizard of
love, “How could i?” i asked of myself. How could i have pushed another mouse from the ledge? How could i in good conscience be responsible for another panic-stricken innocent clawing and scratching at the cold, enamel encrusted cast iron of the physical realm!? Well, in my defense it wasn't intentional, it just sort of happened. But here he
was! Kicking and screaming and clearly none too pleased with life as he found it so far! What could i do now? How could i undo the damage I had done?

By the way, for those of you still wondering what a voorlooper is, it's a Dutch term meaning a precursor or something that goes before. Are you with us now? Can the class move on? Good, now pay attention.

i have, in my infernal wisdom, tried to raise Churchmouse to be tough. The cat's got claws so the mice gotta have teeth and the wherewithal to use them. i have not tried to shelter him. i punch holes in his umbrella. i hid one card of his solitaire deck. i made him walk the two miles from our way station to his Grandparent's house, through the
woods and over a stream and across busy highways, when he was three, bearing his own diapers and spare clothes in a backpack. Life is tough, i had to make him tougher. If he hurts himself, i check for blood, no wound, no sympathy. Get back in there and bite that Cat in the rump! Yeah, so your arm’s broken? Does that mean you can't do your chores?
We'll get it set tomorrow, right now keep digging that foundation! Are you crying? There's no crying in Baseball?! i've pulled no punches. If he asks a question, i don't sugarcoat the answer. There's nothing at the end of the rainbow, the closer you get the further back it retreats. You want to go to college? Keep crushing those recyclables. No, there is no Sea monkey heaven, their out in the septic field. Sorry, women are a
mystery to me too, son.

Here's where God's wisdom departs from men's. Or more specifically this
man’s…

Churchmouse, my son, is perhaps the most empathic, caring, gentle soul it has ever been my fortune to meet.

Imagine if you will, a bramble patch. Raspberries abundant. Thorns prevalent. A picture of life, offering a sweet, succulent, ripe, red reward and placing it firmly within the sharp tendrils of prickly punctures a'plenty. Imagine Rascal, an almost three-year-old who has a phobia of plants. “Floraphobia? Never heard of it. Just push your way through, Rascal, fercryinoutloud! And for the love of Mike! Will you quit that
whining!

"Would like me to hold your hand, Rascal?" my eldest says. And there in a shaded forest floor were two struggling, almost helpless mice, fighting feisty flora and fickle father alike, hand in hand. Proving to all who would bear witness that weakness born by two in love can go where ever strength may struggle to. And it doesn't go there alone.

Churchmouse noted to me the other day that he has never seen me cry. Someday i'll tell him it's because i'm not as strong as he is.

What would David Lee Roth do?

i got a question for ya. How do you know when to jump? i just got done reading a post by one of my favorite authors, Donald Miller. This one, in case you don't already read him. If you don't, you should, you apparently already read blogs and his is much better than mine. Don's been like a jumpmaster in my life since Ballisticat turned me on to him a few years ago now. When i read Don, i can feel the aluminum hull of the plane, the thrum of the engines, feel the wind whipping through the open door. i can see him standing there, goggled and dimpled, smiling at me, one gloved hand gripping the frame and the other patting my shoulder and yelling, "Time to go!" i can see the ground, faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar below and most of all, i can feel the weight of the parachute on my back. With Don, this is a scheduled event. i didn't exactly know what i was getting myself into when i started reading him but i figured it out pretty quick. For a long time now, i knew this moment was going to come. And, more importantly, i wanted it to.

Don's latest is about making a list of your Likes and Dislikes over the past year. He says to use this as a tool for making better choices in the coming years. Wise. Not particularly helpful for me, since i can't remember last year but ... wise.

i won't bore you with my list, (collective sigh of relief) even as short as it is but i will tell you that the first item on the Dislike side would be, "being a carpenter." This is particularly bothersome to me. It means i've spent the vast majority of the last year and indeed, my adult life, doing something i hate. No wonder i'm a grumpy, bitter person. So, you say, simple, just figure out what you want to do and do it instead. Problem solved, post over, back to Facebook and some serious literature.

Not so fast, Mr. Motor-mouse! We never answered the original question. How do you know when to jump? For you see, leaving a career in which you know how to make money and can even make money when you've been laid off in this economy is not a hop off the curb. It's a leap of faith of biblical proportions. You mistime this jump and you don't break a leg, you splatter like a watermelon dropped from the Empire State Building. And mama melon has to pay the mortgage on the melon farm and raise the two little melonheads all on her own. When i think about actually stopping carpentry and working full time on a book, Don, the plane and the parachute all disappear and i'm standing on the rim of a skinny concrete detail, with rounded edges, no handholds, the wind tearing at my clothes and carrying the sound of laughter and the really solid looking, unforgiving city street faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar below. i got two choices, climb back in through the open window and the shuffle back to the suffocating safety of my cubicle....

or Jump.

Quit yer pushin', i'm thinkin' here!

What's in a name?

(This post is a continuation of the previous thread. i do that from time to time. Cuz i don't have the time or space to say what i want to say and let's face it, you probably wouldn't read anything that long anyhow :)

There was this girl. Nice girl, came from a lousy family but she tried real hard. Just wasn't given a lot of direction, you might say. So she kept screwing up, chased the wrong boys, hung out with a bad crowd, she was going nowhere fast. No job, no education, no real future. She finds ways to cope, you know what i mean?

Then she met this guy. The guy. He's rich, successful, classy, totally out of her league. Heck, he's out of anyone she knows' league. He's friggin' perfect. And for some reason, totally into her. At first she's terrified that if he finds out what she's really like, where she's been, about that trip to the clinic, he'll drop her like yesterday's tampon. But he's not going anywhere and you can't hide forever. Slowly, painfully, her whole ugly past comes out. Eventually he meets her crazy family. Even that isn't enough to turn him off. He asks for her hand, she accepts.

So the day comes. She's in a room with her friends, but she's completely alone. She's in a white dress, looking in a mirror. She feels like a fraud. She looks like a princess but she knows who's underneath. In a few minutes, that poor girl from the street is going to belong to someone amazing. She'll have a new home, a new family, security, love, things she always wanted but never dreamed would come. And all she has to do, is accept it. She can't earn it. She doesn't deserve it. It's all because He loves her. He will change her station. He is providing the home, the future, the security. He even bought the dress. The symbol of purity that covers her. In every way, His love for her is completely changing who she is and who she will be. And to show the world that- He will give her a new name. His name.

This is the moment we Christians live in. We're still in the world, surrounded by our friends but not the same. We have been married, adopted into a new family, a new home with wealth beyond our imagining. We have been made spotless, bathed and covered in a purity not our own. Because of Jesus' love we belong, we're wanted, we are changed.

We are new.

Agent Smith knows that too. But he knows that if he can keep reminding you of what you were, the son of Ander, son of man, he can keep you down. If he can keep hitting you with disappointments, false comforts; if he can keep dredging up your past, smothering you with guilt, responsibility, duty, false religiosity, he can pummel you into submission. The son of your parents cannot stand up to him. The daughter of your mother cannot break the cycle of failure. All your cleverness, all your strength, all your resources will fail to get you off those tracks. Will fail to save your marriage. Will fail to protect your kids. Will fail to ward off depression, addiction, bitterness or loneliness. You will be run down by car after car. It's inevitable.

Unless someone else lifts our head. Someone else gives us strength, wisdom, purity and a new name. Unless someone else gives us the faith to remember and believe that...

"My name... is Neo!"

The sins of the father...

"You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... It is the sound of your death... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson... "

Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel. Agent Smith sees it. He knows that you cannot rise above what you are. He knows you are just the product of genes and environment. A child ignored and neglected seeks out his own comfort and raises children who feel ignored and neglected who become seekers of comfort and neglect children of their own. Children of divorce, divorce. Children born out of wedlock become single parents. A parent injects their fears and false securities into the mold whether intentionally or not and the next batch is poisoned before leaving the nest. Lather, rinse, repeat.

"Nay!" say thee. "I am a ship, not a caboose! I choose my own destiny!" Good for you! Go forth and sail proud. But why, pray tell, in so many ports do people recognize you. "Would have known you anywhere," they chuckle, "you're your mother's daughter." Or do they grab your chin and burr, "Yew have the look of yer mutha." "Your old man was the same way at that age," they say with a shake of the head or a knowing smirk because they know the old man better than you. And one day, sitting on a lonely beach, the ship smashed against the rocks, holding a bottle with a note in your grandmother's handwriting, you look back and with the telescope of hindsight, you can plot out how you followed an invisible path that couldn't have been more rigid had it been two tracks made of steel. Oh sure, some of the details were different enough to cloud the journey, beer instead of vodka, porn for adultery, career instead of civic duty but the gutter outside the old port bar has tasted those tears before. They just fell from your father's eyes.

If you haven't reached that port yet, just wait, you'll get there.

Agent Smith knows this. He barely needs to hold your head to the tracks. You don't have the strength to fight fate. You couldn't win even if you knew what to do.

Except, you do fight. You roll forward and with a strength you shouldn't possess you push and through clenched teeth you tell him,

"My name... is Neo. "

But what's in a name? i'll tell you later.

There is no spoon

Way back in the olden, golden days, when television had three channels and a random assortment of UHF signals that may or may not tune in depending on where you stood in the room and how you held your hands or whether mom was running the blender, there was a sitcom called "Taxi." Upon said sitcom was a character, played by the great Christopher Lloyd, called Reverend Jim "Iggy" Ignatowski. Jim was a child of the sixties, which means he was born somewhere in the late forties, went to schoolthrough the fifties and woke up one day from a flashback of the original Mouseketeers in a condemned building with an Ordination from the Church of Peace and a fingerpainted thesis to find himself in the seventies. Jim was on a voyage, in the sense that a raft with no rudder, sail or oar set adrift on the ocean without sight of land, is on a voyage, of self-discovery. Meaning, he was always discovering things about himself. "Jim," his fellow taxi drivers would exclaim, "I didn't know you played the piano!" "Jim, I didn't know you spoke French!" To which Jim might reply in wonderment...

"Neither did I."

i think i now know how Jim felt in those

moments. "Dad, I didn't know you could paint."

"Neither did I."

But apparently i can. i had always looked at painting as an easy way to ruin a good drawing. Now i see it as a separate entity all together. It's not just coloring in the spaces defined by the pencil. It's breathing life into nothingness. It's calling forth something that wasn't there before. But it took a new point of view to see it.

You can see it to the left, just a blur of color. Those darks, the obscene red and garish yellow. What the heck is going on? You might say it just looks like a mess and that's okay. Cause that's what i thought too.

Except that Mynnie who was sitting across the room said, "that looks great!" i wondered about her eyesight a bit but then i decided to step back and see what she was seeing. And there it was...

A spoon, from whence was none. i was just too close to it to see it and i knew what i was painting!

i was told about a family last night. The husband has had a brain tumor removed and is undergoing chemotherapy for colon cancer. His wife, wanting to leave him alone, decided to remove the snow that builds up on the roof between the addition and the main house herself. Instead of using the ladder like he always does though, she climbed out of a window onto the roof. And fell thirty feet. Concussion, broken wrists, broken leg, broken pelvis. She's now in a nursing home where she's looking forward to a long and painful therapy. Something else happened to the husband that i missed because he's in the ICU at the hospital. i don't know who their children are staying with in the mean time. If anyone's life looks to be a mess of the garish and obscene right now it's them. Suffering is like that. When you're in the storm, your reality is very small. You're not planning next week. You're surviving right now.

And there are storms all the time and of all kinds. And it may seem like God is sleeping. And you may be tempted, quite rightly, to yell out, "Master! Don't you care if we drown?!"

That would be a limited perspective though. With time to mull it over, you may remember that, of course he cares, he's God and loves you perfectly. He's also the master of the storm and if he's sleeping it's because he's not worried about it. He can pull back and see this maddening swirl from a different perspective. He can see how it fits into the whole. He can not only see the spoon but the cup and the chili.

And it's going to be delicious.

Where'd you get that tan?

Having a blog would be such a boon to my my myopic memory if i wasn't so adverse to living in the past. i was just about to launch on a retrospective of two thousand and ten when i realized... i have no idea what happened in two thousand and ten. So i let my mind wander back a bit... there was a new years eve party, i remember that. Couldn't have been that good a party then. There was a Christmas. i remember the big gift of the year being a big surprise, even to those of us who thought we knew what it was. (see last post for sorry tale) i remember Happ looking at me kind of funny when i made him read from the Bible to start Christmas day. Which, honestly, he should have seen coming after making a snide comment to me earlier in the month about how no one mentions Jesus during Christmas. That's what you get for being right.

Okay, so i've made it one week back into the Ten. Going a little further i see a totaled mynnie-van and a mynnie with yet new injuries to her already battered body. i see a best buddy battling a surprise cancer. Said battling looking mostly like sitting uncomfortably and waiting for other people to decide his fate for him. Lots of fun there. i see me nearly setting fire to a development. i see a father in intensive care with hoses and pipes leading to all major orifices and a family hoping for the best and worrying about the worst. i see me losing my job. And we're only into July!

So i'm thinking, wow, the last half of the year bit hard. i really don't remember anything all that bad ... in comparison... in the first half of the year. What did happen in the first half; how did i start it off? i decide to go back and peruse last year's blog-eggs. And there, second entry for the year in February is a post about my church closing. That's when two things hit me.

1. My memory apparently reaches some kind of limit at six months or six events. And...
2. Twenty-ten sucked.

Oh sure. The Silver Lining Society will certainly point out that all of these things led to a deeper awareness of God's provision and peace. And after all, hasn't losing my church forced me to ponder next steps? Hasn't losing my job brought more freedom and less stress (job related stress)? Didn't Pop come home after all? Isn't Ballisticat's prognosis hopeful and chemo going well? And wouldn't you say that Mynnie is far from as squished as she would have been had she hit the tree on the driver's side of the van? Not to mention the cool, new van, the Starship Mynnieprize. And wouldn't you say that this whole sorry tale of airsoft guns has taught Rascal a valuable lesson about how materialism does not equal peace, fulfillment or joy? Besides, he has a working gun now. Not the one he asked for, but it works.

Yes. Yes, you could say all of that and more. And still even be right.

And twenty ten still sucked. Just cause God brings you through the Valley of the Shadow of Death doesn't mean that it was like a vacation in Maui. It's still the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My skin may have a healthy, bronze glow but it came from passing through the fire, sometimes literally and not from sitting on a beach.

Now don't get me wrong. i'm not complaining. i'd rather go through the war with God than bask on a beach without Him. He is my treasure, my companion, my vacation and my joy. If here we are, almost a year later and i still have no church home, still have no job and no prospects of a writing/art career, if i glare as Cialis ads instead of laugh at them, if Monster Airsoft still hasn't returned my last angry letter or my money, i still have my Hope.

i said my second post in the Ten was about losing my church. As it turns out, my first one was about discovering that i am a hoper. i guess, as i tentatively stretch out one toe into the cataract that is twenty'leven, i should be thankful that my hope is not wishful thinking. Not denial. Not an inability to deal with my problems. It's not whistling through the graveyard. My hope is no paper tiger. It has been tested and found true. And it has a great tan!

Allow six to eight disappointments for delivery

There are people in this life that know what they want. Plan how to get it and then, go get it. Three step process. Identify. Strategize. Execute. Epilogue: sit back and enjoy fruit of labor.

And then there's us Frickens. On the rare occasion that we Frickens know what we want, it is usually out of reach, out of bounds, or out of stock. Take the typical case of one Rascal Fricken.

Rascal is twelve. Rascal loves his first person shooter video games. Rascal incessantly stalks around the house making machine gun noises with his lips. Yes, we are worried about Rascal. Rascal decided that nerf guns and paintball markers weren't doing it for him. He wanted an airsoft rifle. For the uninitiated, Airsoft are 12mm plastic beebee guns that often are the same size, weight and feel of the original military rifle they are based upon. They are used by military fanboys to simulate the combat they will hopefully never see but idolize just the same. Rascal doesn't have anyone to simulate combat with so i guess he just wants a more realistic toy for when he stalks around the house and make machine gun noises with his lips.

Regardless the validity of the dream, Rascal wanted an Airsoft gun. Rascal plotted, scrimped, saved and strategized. He located the particular gun he wanted and could afford, found a website and brought it to me. i warned him to do research on the website and the gun. He claimed to have done both. The purchase was made and the cold, hard, calicifying lesson in reality began.

When i was a kid, if you ordered something, you knew how long it was going to take to get it. Allow six to eight weeks for delivery. That was the mantra. That's why it was funny when Wile E. Coyote put an order form in the mailbox, stood there for fifteen seconds and got his ACME Little Giant Flying Saucer Kit without leaving the mailbox. Nowadays, kids don't laugh at that. Cuz that's actually the way it is. You click a mouse and the Ups guy is knocking on your door. This is the age of On Demand, OnStar and instant mashed potatoes.

Or, at least that's usually how it is. Apparently Monster Airsoft.com is still using that old Speedy Delivery guy on the bicycle from Mr. Rogers' neighborhood. Have you ever been trapped in a house with a twelve year old who is waiting for the one thing he thinks is going to make his life complete? One of these days i'm going to have to try waterboarding so i can see if there's a comparison. It's like taking a trip to Grandma's that's five weeks long. i have no idea how people used to travel by ship. It's amazing any children survived after the first month of "Are we there yet?"

One week of "Do you think it will come today?" shy of an infanticide, it arrived. i'm not sure who was more relieved. After some assembly being required Rascal took his new toy outside and perforated the box it had come in with a thousand 12mm holes. And he was happy.

For approximately six hours. That's when the trigger broke. The next day the cleaning rod snapped and the simulated M203 grenade launcher under the barrel quit cocking. It became obvious to me that twelve year olds caught in the first blush of young lust are not to be trusted to do good research. So i wrote the company. The company rather bluntly directed me to their fine print. i wrote the company a slightly angrier letter. They agreed to credit us to another purchase from their stock. We sent the rifle back to them, yes, in the perforated box, i thought it a fitting show of our affection. About a month later the company responded with, not a letter to me, but a forwarded, inter-office memo from one schmuck in their warehouse to another schmuck in their warehouse about how he fixed the trigger and it should work as long as "no one tries to pull the trigger while the safety's on." i didn't complain too much about the sarcasm as this is exactly what my older boy had done. But i reminded them of the other malfunctions and waited another month.

Eventually they got around to telling me that they would give me the credit after all because one of their warehouse schmucks dropped the rifle and it broke in half. No foolin', that's what they said. Never mind that i had told them i didn't want the original gun back anyhow. By now, Christmas was approaching. The cost difference between the gun Rascal had bought and the "quality" guns was another c-note so Mum and i told Rascal that maybe if he picked out another, better grade gun, he might get some Christmas money to help. Rascal was in the dream factory now. A whole new arsenal had opened up to him. He chose a space-age looking Austrian job with picatinny rails for future scopes and grenade launchers. He made his selection and when his head was turned the elves went to work ordering it. Having some experience with how these schmucks operate, i kept a close tab on the status of our order. The order was confirmed on the seventh of December. On the fifteenth, they notified us that the item we had ordered, which was in stock on the seventh, really wasn't in stock but had to be ordered by them. We could expect it in 3-5 business days. Ten days later, on Christmas Eve, through a series of unfortunate events, we finally held the box in our hands. Something told me i should open it but it was Christmas Eve and i had a chance to have all of the gifts wrapped by midday for the first time in my life. i wrapped the gun without opening it.

Rascal has been a pretty good sport about it all. Especially when he opened it up on Christmas day, the day he had now been looking forward to since September. The day where dreams seem possible. Even if those dreams only involve more realistic Austrian designed focuses for machine gun noises made with your lips. He saved it for last.

The very last present.

It was a gun.

It worked.

It hasn't broke yet.

It's not the one we ordered. Coincidentally, it's a model that's fifty dollars cheaper than the one we ordered and doesn't work with the scope that his Grandma picked up for it. But one good thing came out of it all. i haven't been asked in over a week, "Do you think it will come today?" Well, not by Rascal anyway.

It's a shame that it wasn't a real gun though. That would have come in handy for getting our money back.

The Deep

What if you didn't just think that you didn't belong in the world you were in...

...you had proof.

Long, long ago i wrote a young adult fantasy. i'm in the process of rewriting it. Here's the link if you're interested.... really, really, really bored... and possibly are the recent recipient of a full, frontal lobotomy:

The Deep

The Gospel of Tron

In the beginning was the User, and the User was a bumbling fool.

The Ballyhoo and i went to see Tron: Legacy the other night. While it's a visual feast, the story is devoid of calorie. It's a jelly donut where someone forgot the jelly. i was struck mostly by the obvious biblical metaphors. Small wonder, eh? Happ who studied archetypes in literature this year tells me that that's all it was. Disney just used the Bible as an archetype, a primitive model for their story. You can't read too much into it. Hmmm. Methinks me son misapprehends the power of story to shape idea and thought. Especially since i have been telling him the opposite of this since he was old enough to sit still while i spoke and it only took one teacher with a different story in one class to change his mind.

God Himself knows the power of narrative. That's why the Bible exists. It's the story we need to know if we are to know Him.

"¹⁰⁵ Your word is a lamp for my feet,

a light on my path." Psalm 119

Words are lamps. They light up the soul of the speaker or the writer. They illuminate what's going on inside. That's why a lie has such power. It clouds the viewer's eye's with false light, false images. It misrepresents the soul of the liar... until the lie is laid bare. It's why the Bible is attacked so viciously, so often. Atheists want more than anything to prove it false. To expose the lie they see it as. The lie their faith is based upon. If it's not a lie then they are much to be pitied.

The Satan is known as the father of lies. He knows that the best lies have nearly eighty percent truth to them. He can quote scripture. Just take something true and suck the jelly out of it. Most folk won't dive in deep enough to notice anyway. Disney is not the devil but they seem to be about his work willfully or not. That's what they're stories show and Tron is perhaps one of their most obvious. Let's review shall we, (spoiler alert: i am not paying any attention to whether i give away the story, plot or twists of the movie so if you really don't want to know anything about it, don't watch the original Tron from the eighties.)

• Kevin Flynn is God. He has the white clothes, the beard, the inscrutable mystic ideology and the power to create. He creates an entire universe within a computer and populates it with programs.
• Programs are angels. We have Flynn's archangel, Tron and a new one he creates in his own image (literally) named Clu.
• Clu is Lucifer. The best and brightest and obviously the most beautiful of all the programs. Flynn creates him to aid him in creating the Perfect System. The one that will bring light to all the universe, both in and outside the computer.
• Obviously there has to be a fall. God and his angels can't just go on to create harmony and beauty. And here's where Disney really starts sucking the Jelly out and injecting silicone.
• ISO's arrive. ISO's are people. Innocent yet wonderfully wise as Flynn describes them. ISO stands for Isometric algorithms. Which, as near as i can figure is what mathematicians use to discover things about stuff they don't understand by finding identical parallels between the mystery and already known areas of study. i say, "arrive" because that's how Flynn describes it. He didn't create them, the conditions were accidentally right for them to spontaneously form. Translation: there is a God but we evolved without his actual design.
• Flynn is enthralled with the ISO's. He forgets about his original ideas and henceforth, CLU. CLU becomes jealous and overthrows Flynn. Translation: Lucifer is God's fault cause he's absent minded and callous. Lucifer has a legitimate beef with God.
• Kevin Flynn's son Sam shows up on the grid. Sam is Jesus. But he has no idea why he's here or what he's supposed to do. He want's to rescue, not people, but God, Flynn.
• As a matter of fact, rescuing people/ISO's is gonna be a bit tough, cuz there's only one left, Quorra. Far from the outcast, downtrodden, poor and needy that Jesus came to, Sam is going to end up rescuing a pretty hot, pretty capable, pretty worthy critter who will help rescue Sam as well. Translation: God needs us as much as we need Him.
• Cutting to the chase, literally, in the end, God has to sacrifice himself in order to kill Lucifer and allow Jesus and his chosen person to escape. Translation: Good and Evil are two sides of the same coin, God cannot exist without the devil and no matter what happens, we normal folk are probably better off without their interference anyhow.

So, i guess what i'm trying to say is, don't let pretty lights, pretty people, cool bikes and driving techno beats distract you from what the world is preaching every day. In that sense, Tron is a great movie with a great message.

Much and Little about Far, Much and Little

Words, more importantly, the definitions thereof, are vitally important to one's knees and back. Allow me to elucidate. Let's set the wayback machine for just last Saturday morning...

Rascal and i hit the trail that morning at around seven or eight. i didn't have Crocodile Dundee with me to tell me exactly and i didn't care enough to find out. At about nine-thirty Rascal asks, "are we almost there?"

"Almost where? Where do you think we're going?"

"Anywhere, I thought we were camping." i had to stop. He immediately sat down, something he was prone to do whenever i stopped walking. He thought we were camping. Here we were, on a mountain in a state forest with snow falling all around and backpacks the size of armoires. What was it he thought we were doing now?

"What is it you think we're doing now???"

"Hiking."

"That's camping!" i explained carefully with elaborate hand gestures for emphasis.

"I didn't think there was going to be this much walking." i wasn't doing anything at that moment so i had nothing to stop doing out of incredulity. i might have blinked. i doubt Rascal noticed. After talking for another couple of minutes with many more elaborate hand gestures for emphasis we arrived at the source of the problem.

Words. Specifically, the word "camping." Y'see, when i bite into the word "camping" i get the sensation of being on a mountain top, wind in my.. ON my scalp and the world at my feet. My dream is to get as far from civilization as possible, see as much as possible while bringing as little as possible. This may not have always been my feeling, it may have been heavily influenced by people: stealing my gear, blaring their radios, glaring their lights; a love of the wilderness and the movie "Last of the Mohicans." Where e'er it comes, it is burrowed deep within my heart now and is constantly pushing it into motion. Whether by canoe, motorbike, foot, horse or hamster team, that is my objective: Far, Much and Little. The mode of transportation of the Little is a means to an end. The making of camp: a vile necessity since i can't hike in the dark and tend to fall asleep if i walk, ride or row all day. Far, Much and Little, an objective i thought my youngest frick shared when on our last trip, where we made camp in the truck, it wasn't until we were taking a day hike down the gorge that he said to me, "Now it feels like a camping trip."

Assumption versus communication. The assumption was that Rascal and i shared a meaning. Communication, with elaborate hand gestures for emphasis whenever possible, revealed that what Rascal meant was... going into the woods some-where, making a semi-permanent campsite, striking out from said campsite with the goal of going to see some-thing and then returning to that same aforesaid campsite in the same afternoon, if not by lunch.

There's an African proverb that goes, "If you need to travel fast, go alone. If you need to travel far, go with friends." The American version would be something like, "If you need to travel fast, go by car. If you need to travel far, you're on your own."

Plan?? There ain't no plan!

Yeah, camping trips rarely go according to plan... and that's all part of the plan. For you see, without opening yourself up to the potential for the nuisance, the crisis or the trial, you will never experience the spectacular, the amazing or the wonder. Or as Dori put it Finding Nemo, "If you never let anything happen to him, nothing would ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo."

F'rinstance:

• Finding a quiet little private campground out of the way.
• Waking up in the morning with muddy raccoon footprints all over my sleeping bag.
• Seeing stars again. No really, you forget how many there are until you get away from the lights of the world.
• Shooting stars.
• A full moon so bright you mistake it for a manmade spotlight.
• An entire church group throwing aside their dignity and jumping in the river. Frolicking like they got no sense.
• A horseback ride where Wayward and i "accidentally" became separated from the group for a while and then got to gallop for a bit when we got caught.
• Morning on the water with no one around and mist devils, little swirling fog tornados rising off the river all around our canoe.
• The ride of the midnight snorter! Deer, apparently taken aback by men sleeping in their path to the river, running right through our camp in the middle of the night and then stopping and stomping on the other side while trying to figure out what the heck was that?! Not one night, but two in a row.
• Listening to my sons laughing and tearing the heck out of the inside of the tent while i cook.
• Starting a bison stampede with the thunder of the motorcycles and then outrunning it.
• Finding Moose Drool. And enjoying it.
• Finding an underground river. While still above ground.
• Waking up to six inches of snow.
• The mountains, the rivers, the sunsets, sunrises, the forests, deserts, lakes, skies, the secret glades and scenic valleys, furry critters, feathered critters, bugs, noises, music and silences that you will only find away from the things of men.
• The highs and lows and mysteries and stories, the light and the darkness in the souls of companions, Ballisticat and Wayward and the Ballyhoo. Being there for each other when the trail becomes the trial. Griping at each other when the trail becomes the trial. Sharing the awe when surprised by the serendipitous. Staring into campfires at the end of a day, partly from wonder, partly from exhaustion. Wondering how people lived like this all the time? Wondering if we could? Wondering if our wives would let us. (That's not a typo. You don't need a question mark at the end of a question you know the answer to.)
• Learning new meanings to old words like, "friend" and "home" and "dinner."

When i escape, when i go through the gate of the Great Northern Wall that we have built between us and the wilderness, i am physically representing my desire to cross the wall between us and God. To cast off my luxuries, my comforts, my security and put myself at His mercy. That requires risk. God is BIG! He's unpredictable. But He's also secret and intimate. That can be scary and that can be glorious. And that's the point. i want to go back to Eden. i know i can't. Not yet. But i sure do appreciate the glimpses.

Wanna go camping?

The packs straps were burrowing into our shoulders as if looking for a place to hide, we were lathered like race horses wearing thermies and a parka and Rascal says to me, "I left my trail mix and meatsticks in the car." What i heard was, "Father, despite your very clear and specific instructions to me and despite your putting it in the same bag as the clothes i was to put on just prior to embarking on our three day journey, the very same clothes i am now wearing, i seem to have left a third of my provisions for this journey, by an almost deliberate act of ignorance with my cast-off laundry in the car." This was the first thirty minutes of our latest camping trip.

It was not an auspicious start.

Which made it just like every other camping trip i've ever took. Let's take a quick tour...

• There was the first trip i took on my own, the Wayward Son and i managed to lock ourselves out of my bronco at a rest area on the turnpike, a subject i've written ad nauseum. When we finally arrived at the State Park there were no campsites available.
• There was the one and only trip i took that Mynnie came on, the one where it rained the entire weekend.
• One where i was a chaperone to the church youth, where i led my charges into the waterfalls to do some rock climbing and one fell twenty four feet to break his arm and glasses. And then it rained the rest of the weekend, so hard it flooded all the tents. Fortunately i don't use them.
• There was the time the Wayward Son and i had all of our gear stolen out of our campsite.
• There was my brilliant idea for Ballisticat and i to put a canoe into the West Branch Susquehanna and then row UP stream.
• My other bright idea to take a four year old back packing. Yes, i carried him the last few miles of the last day. i talked Ballisticat into going on that trip too. Funny, he hasn't been able to go camping with me since.
• My one and only motorcycle trip, again with the Wayward Son, involved finding no campsites at the park (maybe that's his thing) and so we camped in a carwash in the streaming rain. At least we weren't able to lock ourselves out of the bikes though it did take me a while to figure out why mine would inexplicably die while i was riding it. (The rather loose kickstand had a kill switch attached to it. Bungee cords, don't leave home without them.)
• The Ballyhoo gang and i started our second trip together (Rascal was now eight) with a car accident.
• On our last trip together and our first trip without Happ the Pretty, Rascal and i chose the wrong side of the gorge to camp on and ended up sleeping in the truck in a tourist trap.

No, nothing goes according to plan when we willfully go homeless. Which is precisely according to plan...

For Kevin

Some idle thoughts while idling on the great Eastern Not-so-free-way of 95....

• 95 is urban blight made into a road. Too many people on top of each other means, less progress with more violence.
• Okay, one more time for the cheap seats... MERGING IS MUCH, MUCH EASIER AND SAFER FOR EVERYONE IF YOU ARE TRAVELING THE SAME SPEED AS THE TRAFFIC YOU ARE MERGING WITH!!!!! NOT TEN MILES AN HOUR SLOWER, THE SAAAAAAAAME SPEED!
• You know that commercial where they ask, "What if cars behaved more like schools of fish or flocks of flying birds?" and it shows all these cars moving in total harmony to merge at high speed into just one or two lanes of traffic? Yeah, they need to perfect that technology and stop worrying about whether or not people can parallel park. (See bullet point two.)
• Cruise control people! You have a forty thousand dollar Toyota! I know you have it!
• Sudnah's drive slower as a people than yankees. It's not a criticism, it's just an observation. Up here in the colder climes, if someone is doing less than five miles over the speed limit, we look for the Person with Disability tag, otherwise we assume there's just something wrong with their car.
• i understand why you would put one rest area in between the north and southbound lanes, i just question the wisdom of having people merge with the fastest traffic. (See bullet point two.)
• This one's for the Washingmore area. If you are contemplating widening a four lane highway because of your traffic woes... you have a larger infrastructure problem that you are totally ignoring. It's a band-aid for a sucking chest wound, Mr. Cityplanner. That's way too many humans in way too many cars all trying to go to the same place! There has to be a better way!
• That said, the answer, Tokyo, is not to have guys who's job is to physically stuff more people into the train than it will hold so the doors will shut.
• The path to bigotry and elitism is a steep hill smothered with lard. We have toll booths. Someone invents EZ pass. Fine. They no longer have to come to a complete stop. Those of us with conspiracy issues can continue paying the toll with paper and chips of metal that no longer represent a bar of gold in some deposit somewhere so the government that's taking our picture anyway can't track us as we drive our families to grandma's. Then they create special lanes for the EZ pass. Fine. Makes sense. Why should Tamika the Tolltaker have to stop painting her nails to watch an EZ passer pass her? Then come the express lanes for EZ pass. "Come to the darkside," they murmur as they rip through the toll booths at highway speeds. "We have cookies." Then someone lets you use their EZ pass on 95 and you spend a half an hour in Maryland traveling four miles in stop and go because they only have two lanes of express EZ pass and four of regular toll booths but fourteen million cars trying to use them and you start thinking, "This is stoopid. All those idiots who don't have EZ pass should get only one lane a mile from here so the rest of us can drive!" Then it hits you, "Eep! i have become one of ....THEM!"
• When the real #{}<<'n issue is, WE ALREADY PAY TAXES! WHY DO WE HAVE TOLL BOOTHS AT ALL??
• i've never used the caps lock button this much.
• i heard of a population study done on rats once where the rats became increasingly violent and manic as the population increased beyond the environment's ability to sustain. i saw this study in action in that traffic jam yesterday. (see bullet point two)
• This one is not technically a 95 issue except that 95 touches Jersey so maybe that's the transmission point for this stupidity. Traffic circles are not a viable solution to anything. They are the problem. They are a virus that must be stamped out with extreme prejudice.
• Finally, driving 95 has reinforced my desire to someday retire to a boat. That and the list of cool restaurants that have docks that i'm compiling. i need one somewhere in between the Rideau Chain, Ontario and Annapolis, Maryland though. That's a long way to sail between Guinness and fish.

No one made me do this.

i've gotten lazy...er. And i'm not happy about it. Apparently, without someone, physical or metaphorical, standing behind me with a bullwhip, i don't have a lot of motivation to do much of anything. Strangely, the things i want to do are so self-serving that my conscience kicks in and doesn't allow me to do them either and so i sort of hover, trembling in a dead space between what i ought and what i nought without enough umption to bump me bum either direction. It's why i hate Saturdays. Quite often on a Saturday there is no one telling me clearly what i need to do. There's plenty to do. Too much usually and so an ordering has to take place. A structure of priority has to be assembled. But that is something to do and there's no one making me do it.

Even my writing has suffered. i once wrote a complete book. It wasn't a good book and i'm in the process of rewriting it but i actually got something down from start to finish. You know why. Cuz a couple of little kids started reading it and wanted me to finish. So there's your bullwhip. A gentle hand behind it but a whip just the same. Now? Heck, my last blog post wasn't even up to my standards. Granted, my chief concern was getting it written down before the smoke smell was out of my nostrils but that's barely fit for my notes and now i feel that there is a burnt out hole in the center of my blog as well as the back of the yard. Something published needs to be entertaining for the reader. There's an unspoken contract between me and thee that says, your time here will not be wasted. And i have to apologize. It has been lately. So before i go and waste more of it. Let me end here with the apology and the promise, that hopefully, there will be a return to the days of yore when reading a blog by a scruffy scribe contains a laugh and a truth and well spent minute or two. Or at least a laugh. Possibly just a chuckle. Heck, i'll be happy if you smile.

Hello, I'm Johnny Cash

Minutes. Maybe even singular. That’s the timescale we’re talking about here. Possibly no more than sixty seconds from the time my little “controlled” burnpile jumped its ring of rocks and caught the surrounding leaves to the time I walked around the side of the house to get some more tarpaper. In that minute the fire ate itself a six-foot diameter circle. While shocked at the blackened ring of immolation, the fires themselves that formed the ring didn’t look very daunting. So at first I tried to just stomp them out. My feet, disproportionately large for a man only five six and steady fodder for mockery my whole life, only served to spread the impending disaster. The pillowy piles exploded and my podiatric paddles poofed with each panicked punt as if plunged into puffy pyrotechnic poodle pelts. Next I bolted for the rake. My thought was that if I could rake the flaming piles back within General Sherman’s Circle they could finish off the fuel they had and save Savannah. At first it seemed to work. Then to my horror as I was knee deep in a burning pile of brush and leaves that some fool had left at the border of their property, I turned to notice that the line of fire I thought I had defeated had jumped the line and was now windborne from my raking.
“It’s getting away from me, Dad!” I pointed out, most likely, unnecessarily to God. All around me the woods were burning. Small pines were starting to catch. The first neighbor’s house in the path was only twenty feet away from the rapidly growing, rapacious demon I had given birth to. I needed water but the house I was working at hadn’t had water since the pipes froze sometime last winter. I ran for the nearest neighbor that I knew was home, slipping and falling as I went. There were no introductions.
“Do you have a hose I can use?”
“Why sure, lemme…”
“My fire got out of hand!”
“Oh! It’s right around back!”
As it turns out, they had two hoses, already linked. I was hoping it was going to be long enough as i stumbled back to the rising flames, slipped and fell again. “Should I call the fire department?” She called to my running back.
“Probably a good idea.” I answered, not really wanting to need them but knowing the genie was out of the bottle and chaos theory had left Jurassic Park and taken field trip to the Poconos. Now I’ve worked on houses all over, most of them nearing the million-dollar mark. I’ve borrowed lots of hoses. One thing I’ve seen a lot of is poor water pressure. Here, in a little prefab in the hills, which gets its water from a little pumping station down the road, the pressure was phenomenal. Go fig. From then on it was just fire versus water. Time felt very fast but before I had half the circle drowned, a young man appeared with a rake and began pulling back everything the hose wouldn’t reach. I took the moment to grab a hose my house did have and got very wet adding it to the chain with the water going. Another lad with a rake showed up. He raked half-heartedly for a minute as if disappointed that he wouldn’t get to throw on his turnout gear and chop something with an axe and then called off the Dalmatians. Then he was gone too. The first lad borrowed the hose, something he’d probably been wanting to do since he arrived. While he was using his extensive training to carefully aim the garden hose at some remaining hot spots, I surveyed the scene.
From edge to edge the swath of black was now fifty-one feet. That’s no exaggeration, I measured. My throat was acrid and dry and my pants were soaked. My boots were black and my face and hands felt singed. I felt like a fool crossbred with a moron and slathered with some idiot.
I have been using November to remember to be thankful. Each day giving thanks for some blessing of God’s small or big. Tonight, I’m thankful for long hoses, good water pressure, an accurate self image and for mercy on a fool. I think I’ve got a new perspective on the Gospel.

Who indeed?

The frost-tinged wind has blown the treetops bare.

The leafy remnant are more crumbly browns than shades of fire.

Witching goblin, ghostly ghoul retreat to their respective lair.

Cattail valleys echo with the wandering wa-wa choir.

Gunshot signals hunter's boon and hind's resignation

In the evening there is woodsmoke on the crackling, whistling wind.

Cricket and frog relinquish the night to Owl's inquiring conversation

Who, they ask, who, yet believe that Winter is the end?