To be a jalapeño or fishflakes?

The problem that i see with bludgeoning someone with a point is that there comes a moment when you have driven the point home perfectly, they get it, no further shillelagh work is necessary, message received, please stop.  But unless the subject cries "uncle," or "aunt" or "mom" or "total stranger who i just met at random due to a Google search!"  The point maker is likely to continue the battering well past this all critical moment and with each subsequent blow actually degrade their pupil's ability to retain knowledge.  It's a philosophical conundrum, that's for sure.

So, as i look around for my tomahawk, if your skull's feeling a bit like a brown banana you might want to duck into some LOLcats or iTunes or something.  Or better yet, try some reality television, that stuff is guaranteed to calcify the interior of the old brainbox.  Sort of your noodle's natural defenses taking over.

i have spent a large portion of my life wondering what i'm for.  Since i have no trouble believing that there is a God, He loves me and has a purpose for my life as well as everything He does, it seemed an appropriate use of my time and energy.  The problem is, it isn't.

All that time thinking about my purpose became time thinking about me.  i became the focus.  In short, because i wasn't doing something i wanted to do, i assumed i was doing something wrong.  And i was, but the wrong thing i was doing wrong wasn't the right thing.  You see?  Why do you look all bruised and mushy?  As i've chronicled here ad nauseum, i was waiting for a change in circumstances.  A change in environment to lift me out of the malaise i was in and transport me to some higher ground and some Fricken shaped niche that i was designed to fill and i would suddenly blossom like Baryshnikov discovering ballet, into who i was meant to be.  And more importantly, start enjoying this life i'd been given.  

Well, if you take that thought and plant some peppers, frijoles and corn with it, you should get some real good chimichangas by fall.  God has planted you, my hot little jalapeños, in exactly the garden he wanted you in, all we have to do is stop spewing fertilizer and bask in His light and soak up His Living Water.  'fore you can say, "yo quiero Taco Bell," you'll be spicing up whatever batch of chili life whips up.  i guaran-fricken-tee it.  How can i be so sure?  One word:

Jonah.

It's a familiar story, even pagans can summarize it.  But in case there aren't any pagan's around to explain it to you, i'll sum it up real quick.  

God said, "Go here, do this," to Jonah.

Jonah said, "blow it out your ear."  Then he went down dockside, found a boat going to edge of the known universe and he was out of there.  Along comes a storm.  Now the sailors in this boat, they knew how to handle this situation.  They threw everything overboard to lighten the ship, did all their sailor-y stuff, battened some hatches, furl't the mains'l and all that.  When that didn't work and it became obvious the ship was in danger they started praying to their gods, the gods of their own understanding.  No atheists in foxholes or foundering ships apparently.  When that failed to appease Triton they searched the ship and found Jonah sleeping.  "Dude!  Wake up!  Pray to your god, maybe he's got some pull with the mountains of water trying to bury us!"  They drag Jonah up on deck and they determine that someone has truly teed the gods off.  So they cast lots, draw straws, roll dice, flip a coin, play a quick game of hackey-death and surprise, surprise, hello Jonah.

Jo 'fesses up.  The sailors ask, "alright, cool, what do we do to make this stop?"

"Simple, throw me in."

Now, i dunno about you but i chalk being swallowed up by the sea right up there with falling backwards off the slide, being caught in a bear trap in bear country and slowly being compressed into a jello cube on my least favorite ways to check out list.  i don't think Jo would have gotten past the word "throw" before he was practicing his doggie paddle had i been there.  But these sailors were actually pretty human dudes.  Even after he told them this they went back to trying to muscle their way out of the storm to shore.  As we know, it doesn't work, the sailors reluctantly toss him overboard and Jonah gets to be grouper chow.  The storm stops and the sailors convert to Judaism on the spot, offering sacrifices and vows to the God of the Hebrews.

So the Moral of the Story is…do what God tells you to do or He’ll kick your butt.  Yeah, maybe.  But recently he gave me something else to chew on.  He told me that He loved a bunch of scruffy sailors.  And that he used Jonah to present the Gospel to those sailors.  He showed them that they needed to be saved.  He showed them that their gods couldn’t do that saving.  He told them that someone had to die for them to be saved.  Still they tried to do it on their own, well-intentioned works!  "No God, killing is wrong!  We can try harder!  We’ll get it right this time!"  But in the end, someone had to die.  Someone willing and those sailors got it.  And He got all that done, not with some great champion of the faith who lived a blameless life, but with a grumbly, disobedient, self-centered jerk who didn't want to go where God put him and do what God told him to do.  And I find that very encouraging.

Upon this Rock

The temperature was dropping into the single digits.  The wind was howling white.  The stars and their crescent queen shone weakly through a slash in the clouds.  There appeared to be more light coming from the glowing snow than the frozen sky.  For anyone fool enough to be out, exposed skin burned, eyes watered, breath froze.

i was in my element.  i stood at the highest peak of carcass basin and flabbergasped.  i had ascended to the edge of the precipice to test my courage against another drop into the basin itself.  Each descent was a near death experience.  A falling sensation, numbness, all going white, then there was a thump, temporal pain and fear followed by an out of body moment.  It was as if one was rising above the earth, weightless, a spirit free from both the mundane and the profane.  Then tumbling, smashing, crashing down again and there you are, in your sore, battered body again, gasping for air.  Not a run to be taken lightly.

That's what i had climbed here to do but before i could throw sled and body over the edge.  The wind took me.  It came blasting across the snow shrouded wastes, broken only by huddled and shivering houses.  Which is to say, laughing at man's foolishness.  It struck me and roared on and i was inside it and there was nothing to do but laugh with it.  It brought my head up to see the stars which seemed to have come closer, it pulled my head down to view Elwood station in it's entirety.  From fricken coop to mailbox and all trees in between.  Lit up like some ship in the dark sea, alight but only seeming to emphasize it's frailty before the infinite.  Beautiful, yet ridiculous.  All my earthly labor lay before me and i was not proud.  My mind and eyes ran to my sons.  One seeking shelter within my earthly labor, shunning our mad company and the other struggling to join me atop the hill.  i saw their differences.  i saw how one made my job easier by seeking me and the other made me seek him.  And yet deeper was my wife who was not even foolish enough to attempt our idea of fun.  What must i do to reach her?  How can i express this mad joy?  Not at the falling but at the elements forcing me to admit that i am not the center of the universe and yet i am a cherished member of it: a son who sometimes seeks and sometimes must be sought.  This glimpse of both my proper perspective before God and How he must see me at times.  In this momentary revelation i wondered at tomorrow.  Should i call another snow day and stay home or go to work?  Believe it or not, that was a hard decision that had been left utterly to me.  Mundane, Profane, Insane and Sacred all swirled in that wind.

Happ finally crested the hill and asked me what i was doing still standing there.  So i told him all the things that i had thought of, alas without the poetry of recollection.  

"That's a lot to think about in five minutes,"  He remarked.

"When you're an adult you have to do your thinking when you get the chance.  Cause most of the time people will be telling you what to think."  He merely hummed at this.  i don't know if he was thinking that adulthood sucks or that i'm terribly cynical.  "Most of all," i added, "i thought that the stars looked so close that i felt closer to God and then i remembered that He's not up there, He's here... with us.  And He wants to go for another run."  And i threw body and sled over the precipice.

Now i'm sure that the rock had lay under the snow there all along.  Yet somehow, despite our tracks being all around it, we had yet to uncover it's lurking dorsal ridge.  On this run however, my near death experience came a little nearer and i found myself, abruptly halted mid run, holding the sled by it's one remaining handle, the other being torn out by the impact and laying on my back, listening to the wind overhead and the snickering stars.

"Perhaps i heard wrong.  i think He may want to go inside and see what Mom and Rascal are up to."

"Praise God in the great congregation."

So here's what happens...

Sunday morning i wake up a little before seven.  Now i'm not a spring from bed at full throttle kind of guy.  i'm more of an ooze downstairs, osmosip half a coffee pot while reading blogs till i'm ready to ease her up to all ahead half-full.  So, somewhere around seven thirty i realize i've goofed off too long and now it's all ahead full or we won't make it as a family to church by nine-fifteen.

That's when the discouragement hits.  No one wants to get up for church.  i pretty much have to drag three quarters of my family, of which i represent a quarter, to congregate with fellow believers.  As the spiritual head of my household i see this as my duty.  But since it's been this way for so long, i begin to wonder if maybe i'm doing something wrong.  Church isn't a duty, it's a gift.  It's a reunion.  It's a redirecting of our priorities which have a tendency to reset to factory standard, that being our own lovely image in the slot labeled, "Most important person in the universe."  Now if no one in my family is getting this, if they see church as a drag and a burden then i'm not leading, i'm driving.  And while i might be a somewhat successful mule driver, wouldn't it be great if i could get the team to pull for once?

Told you i was a frustrated idealist.

And then there's the practical.  My wife, Mynnie, works six days a week.  Her body is habitually wracked with pain.  She would really, REALLY appreciate a day to sleep in.  So, do i just take the Ballyhoo Gang and let her rest?  Think of all the writing i could get done.  Heck, i just wrote this blog in the time i was supposed to be in the shower.  i have to write next week's service.  There's the irony.  The worship leader for next week is skipping this week's service in order to have time and rest to write next week's service.  Shouldn't entering into the presence of God the Almighty with my brothers and sisters give me rest and inspiration?

Guilt is the wrong reason to go to church.  The desire to be washed free of guilt is a great reason to go to church.  Sloth is a lousy reason not to go to church.  To be encouraged is a great reason to go to church.  These are things i learned in church.

But it sure is hard to get up.

Whole lotta hurtin'

The more people i know, the more i get to know them,

the longer my prayers get.

To all the souls i've loved before

She was eighty-five years old and she had no children of her own.  She did have thirty-five nieces and nephews.  And at one time, she and her husband had thought this might fill the void.

Only one stayed in touch.  Only one came to visit.  Only one could she call if she needed something.  

Now for all i know this woman is the bride of Frankenzilla herself when not in public.  Many people keep a face in a jar by the door but my wife told me about this customer of hers and i didn't think that.  Well, i did think that but only for a really, really brief moment.  My main thought was, "i don't keep in touch with any of my aunts and uncles."

And as i went to bed, in the forty-five seconds between becoming horizontal and the onset of catatonia, my mind started making a list.  A lovely list.  An adorable little list of all the people my mind, who apparently had been paying attention to these things even thought i thought i'd been ignoring...

• My grandmas, one of which is developing alzheimer's like symptoms.
• My father, who asked me to call him.
• My sister, who's undergoing psychiatric evaluations these days while her two remaining children hang with...
• My folks, who asked me to do a couple of favors for them that i keep forgetting.
• My brother, who just moved his family across the country and i never visited while he was in Washington, a state i really wanted to visit.
• My sister's other two kids who now live with their fathers.
• My old partner, Duke, who called me out of the blue yesterday and has been out of work for a couple of months.
• My best man, who i realized last night i never sent his family's Christmas gifts to.
• Panzer, who, like my partner Duke, calls me out of the blue every now and then.
• El Oso, who sent me a very nice Christmas gift himself.
• The Mighty and Glorious Garrett Jaxx, who, wrapped in golden chains, i had been meaning to see even before the king died and made it more of an imperative.
• Gosh, i'm glad this is not a numbered list.
• The aunt and uncle that leant Mynk and i their cabin for our honeymoon.
• The only aunt and uncle that stay in touch on my patri-side.
• Either of the two cousins i have on my matri-side.
• Any of full regiment of cousins from the other side, one of which adored me as she was growing up and had a baby who's name i can't remember.
• Moffatt, my brother in worship who moved on to another outpost of the realm.
• The Hawk, my brother in music who i've made several sad attempts to form a band with.
• Add to this the innumerable friends and relations i see once a week and act like that's enough.  Or the guys i see at work everyday but hardly speak to.  So many lives i rub up against.
• The homeless that i took blankets to once last year and haven't been back.

If you see yourself on this list, know that i haven't forgotten you but that to be remembered by me is little more than a line in my prayers.  If you don't see yourself on this list, then... damn.  Sorry.  Who were you again?

Will you tree my valentine?

There are a lot of trees here at the coop.  And i like them all.  It was really what i fell in love with that first time winding up the drive.  A little patch of forest struggling to survive in a suburban desert.  Take away the trees, like they did next door, and you uncover the ugliness of the two legged stink bugs living underneath.  Like peeling the bark back and exposing a colony of the six legged variety.  Just nasty.  Now, as much as i love this wood and these trees, i don't do anything to maintain them.  To me, God's system for forests seems to work best the less we interfere.  Death, fire, rot are not things to be fought, they're part of the system.  Like digestion, fever and excrement.  They're not pretty but without them we'd be poorer... and probably explode at a very young age.  Ewww.

So the trees i have are the ones that grow.  i love them.  i don't hug them.

Except for two.

There's a holly on the property.  So verdant, lush, green, vibrant at all times yet with berries of opposing hue adding such a splash of crimson that you know this is no one dimensional tree.  It may be a member of the forest, doing all the usual tree stuff: providing shade and cover and protection from the wind but it also knows how to party, it retains something, some secret that it only hints at with these scarlet sparkles.  This tree, i love.  This tree i want to see not just survive, but flourish!  i love to watch it grow.  i love how it hints of Christmas.  i love to just look at it.  

The problem comes when i try to get closer.  Hollies hurt.  They are fierce defenders of themselves.  Reminiscent of rose bushes.  They scratch and tear but i can't let go.  This is the tree i love.  Not an oak or a hickory or a cedar.  This tree, this holly has my heart.  

i've tried pruning back some of the sharper branches but i'm not an arboriculturist or even a topiarist.  i'm more of a ...not quite a lumberjack... um, what's the word, what's the word?  Butcher?  No, too artistic.  Barber?  Enh.  Too scientific.

Ah!  Axe Murderer!  That's it.  The poor critter just looks wounded for weeks till the bare spots fill back in.  While i fret that this time i killed it for sure.  God is gracious though and repairs the damage but... there we are.  Back to square one.  Tree and frick, unable to get closer.  Unable to be apart.  What's a poor hollylover to do?

Go to the other tree i love.  There are only four trees around the coop that i planted myself.  Three are dead, one, George, survives.  But it's not George i go to.  And it's not one of the other two Christmas trees i killed.  This tree i go to was dead when i planted it.  Yet it's the only one that can bring life.

Zwölf, Zwölf, Zwölf!

So here's the thing, no, here's a couple of things, but i'll start off with just one thing, otherwise my sentence structure will be more incomprehensibly convoluted than it already is.  And you, me and the two other people reading this don't want that.

Thingummy numero eins:  i stand accused of mopeyness.  Yeah, i know.  Hard for me to believe too.  But there it is.  Two out of my four comments prove it.  So what's a frick to do?  i'll tell ya.  Some serious drinking.  That's what.  And THEN he starts working on his life.  Analyzing it from every angle.  Getting outside opinions.  Self-help books.  Gurus.  Little old ladies with paisley scarfs on their heads and fake Bulgarian accents.  i mean, mopeyness.  This is serious.  This can't be allowed to fester into melancholy.  Next thing you know, i'd be writing poetry and wearing too much mascara.  

Though a little nail polish might make my crushed finger look less disturbing.  Anyway, that'll all have to wait as i'm still in the drinking stage.  

All dour solemnity aside.  There's two very good reasons why i'm accused of mopeyness.  Thingummy numero eins-point-one: i am mopey.  i don't really mean to be, it just sort of happens to happen.  Not that it's not my fault but here's the thing... thingummy-numero-eins-point-one-A: (you might want to make some sort of outline on a separate piece of paper) i have high hopes for life.  At the heart of every cynic is a disappointed idealist.  Which brings me to...

Thingummy numero eins-point-two: life sucks.  No really.  It's a raw deal.  You're handed a handful of puzzle pieces at the beginning and before you even know what to do with them, your family, guardians, friends and teachers are cutting them, scraping off the images, drawing on them, painting over them and basically making it impossible to tell what to do with them and then they shove you out of the boat and tell you to swim.  i'm not mixing metaphors, that's what really happens.  Nobody mentions swimming until you are out of the boat!  You would think that would come up, but maybe they are all just bitter about being shoved out of the boat themselves.  Or maybe its because of...

Thingummy numero zwei:  i just like saying "zwei."  The only thing better than saying "zwei" is writing zwei.  And the only thing better than writing zwei is saying "zwölf" and the only thing better than saying and writing "zwölf" is that i just now figured out how to put umlauts over the "o!"  You would think someone as easily amused as i am would be less mopey.  But i'm not and maybe that's because of ...

Thingummy numero drei: Which is that the world is messed up.  No, i mean it this time.  It wasn't supposed to be like this.  This is a really, really screwed up counterfeit of what it was supposed to be.  And when we're most clear is when we see it for what it is.  When we're "being all we can be" as an "army of one" and "just doing it" and being "driven" or "living life to the fullest" or " the extreme," we're just buying the lie.  Kidding ourselves.  And trust me, Satan's laughing.  We weren't meant to be wage slaves, that's part of the curse.  Work was supposed to be play.  We sinned, now it's work.  We weren't meant to seek identity, we were given it by God.  We weren't meant to seek validation and worth through relationships.  Relationships can't bear that!  They're with other people for cryin'owtlowd!  Those poor saps are at least as screwed up as you if not more so!  And they're just using you to fix them!  i can't even tell you what a true relationship was supposed to be because i'm so soaked in the muck of the mess that it is like trying to envision eternity, or the vastness of the universe or why peanut oil is more valuable than canola oil and so peanut butter doesn't have peanut oil in it.  Some things are just beyond us.  

So what happens is, i'll be there, worshiping God and it will be so clear.  Why Jesus came, why He said all those weird things and then died.  Why God raised Him.  Why we have to wait for Him to fix it and what we're supposed to live like now and that nagging little idealist in me starts thinking, "yeah!  This time it's going to be different.  I was blind, but now I see!  Life will still be life but armed with this good news, this gospel, I'll be able to truly live as follower of Christ, a person who knows his hope, lives!  This is something to be shared.  It's not babble, it's not theology, it's not religion, it's a love letter from God!  I can sell all I own and give it to the poor!  I can visit the sick, the prisoner, the outcast.  How can I not?"  

And that might last into Trusty the little, green saturn.  It may even make it up the driveway.  But then it runs right into the picture window of life, gets stepped on by negativity, chained back up to the millstone and made to pull for who knows what.  And i suddenly understand monks and nuns.  Who wouldn't want to stay there?  That's the party, the reunion, the kegger.  That's a taste of what's to come but that's not what this life is about.  And for my next trick i'm going to sum up all of what life and this horrendously convoluted post is about with...

Thingummy Numero Vier:  God's throwing a party, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe Dec 21, 2012.  Doesn't matter.  It's coming.  And a couple of our sisters and brothers haven't responded to the invitation yet.  Would somebody please conk them over the head and drag them in?  In love, of course.

Faith behind the lines.

This morning i was in the throne room of God Almighty.  Now i'm shouldering the debris of my life out of the way to find enough room to sit down.

This morning i was leading God's children in songs of praise.  Now i'm a refugee fleeing the television's blare.

This morning i knew my place, i had a home, i fit.  Now i'm stranger in a strange land.

This morning i knew my hope.  Now i'm staring down the barrel of another week and wondering how i'll make it through.

This morning i was in a family of believers.  Now doubters and mockers will be my constant companions.

This morning my purpose was clear.  Now doubt even creeps into me.

This morning the world made sense.  Now it's dark.

Belief isn't the problem.  Living the belief is.

Prick of pride by a proud prick

Pride.

Strange how one man's can so easily wound another's.

The temple of Goomu

The demon sandbox says "2." The one in Mynnie's car said, "6" and the analog one up on the back deck puts the temperature at ten. There's a paltry peppering of snow on the frozen face of the world and i lit the fire off the glowing memories of yestereve's blaze. Now i'm kicking back with a hefty mug o' joe and Buffett's Juicy Fruit on the iJukes. It's good for your soul.

Pointless homespun intros out of the way... Tuesday is inauguration day. The world's chosen messiah takes the reins. On Sunday, at the "kickoff" celebration, V. Gene Robinson will give the invocation. He might possibly use the same phrase he tried out on the host of NPR's All Things Considered the other day: "The god of our many understandings." If he was running it up the flagpole, she not only saluted, she blushed, stood coquettishly and murmured something about having no plans for dinner. A bit of a wasted effort on the bishop but my point is clear. They started using this phrase liberally throughout the rest of the interview. They latched onto it like any fool drowning in his own sin gloms to a semi-logical argument as to why it's not his fault.

And why not? It sounds so reasonable, doesn't it? The god of our many understandings. So open. So fair and equitable. So tolerant. It's inclusive. It allows all people to come and not have to conform. It tells no one they're wrong. It asks nothing of the listener. No inconvenient truths. Just blissful acceptance of all. Harmonious. Peace, love, you dope.

Here's the issue i take with it. Forget it being about God for a second. What if it were the Obama of our many understandings. The George Bush of our many understandings. Putin. Mao Tse Tung. Frank J. Applebottom. Adolf. There are empty headed, hate-mongers out there who think that the entire holocaust thing was fiction. They've convinced themselves that Hitler was maligned. That he was really a great leader who wanted more for his people and order for the world. You know, Hitler was after world peace too. Once every nation was under his shiny black boots, there'd be no more wars to fight. Harmony. Once all the malcontents were lime slathered ashes at the bottom of an abattoir's waste hole then there would be universal Freide, Lieben, du Rauscher!

There are six billion people in the world. That's six billion "understandings" of who Hitler was. And none of it changes the truth of who Hitler was. He was exactly the sum of his thoughts and deeds. There are six billion "understandings" of who Barack Obama is, from messiah to anti-christ. And only time will tell which are right. The point is, someone's going to be right and someone's going to be wrong.

V. Gene Robinson may or may not invoke his god of many understandings tomorrow but he did state clearly that he will not invoke Jesus Christ. His understanding tells him that is the right thing to do. He does not wish to exclude anyone from the festivities. He wants to throw this time, this event, this moment in history open to all Americans and indeed, to all the world.

Jesus accepted all who came to him. He forbade none: hookers, widows, children, lepers, the insane, criminals, tax cheats, rich, poor, heck, though it doesn't mention any specifically, i'd be willing to bet at least one homosexual approached him. He welcomed them all but made it fairly clear that no one comes to the Father except through him. No hoops to jump through, no laws to keep righteously, no baths to take first, nothing you have to do because nothing you could do would work. That's why He did it. All he asks is that you just believe. That's the Bible's understanding.

V. Gene's god doesn't sound like mine. There's no fair middle ground between them. One of us is right, the other is wrong. But which is which? i'm guessing you have your own understanding of that. Here's the kicker. It won't change the Truth.

Sins of the father

My eldest son, Happ, confessed to me last night that he has no idea what he wants to do with his life.  He's only fifteen and in ninth grade but i couldn't help but be worried.  

i try not to project my frailty onto my children.  i want the things i pass on to them, the lessons they learn from me to be God given, scripture based, Spirit breathed.  Too often i can see where others have given me "wisdom" or advice that was based more on mistakes they had made and personal prejudices they had developed from living here in the broken bracken of Adam's curse than from deep searches of the scripture and time spent with the Giver of Wisdom.

Yeah right.  i'm still a part of the brokenness.  F'rinstance, i didn't know that brokenness had two "n's."  Still looks wrong to me.  

i'm still broked.  i have extremely limited control over what my boys learn from me.  And that got me wondering...  y'see, Happ's confession sounded a lot like me when i was his age.  i didn't know what i liked doing.  i didn't do much.  i envied people who had their lives planned and a hobby/interest/passion to pursue.  As a result i survived high school.  Married a wonderful girl, had Happ and started making decisions based on semi-panicked expediency.  It hasn't been a bad life, despite what my whines and rants may convey but it hasn't exactly been, and this pertains mostly to career choices (i have to add that or my lovely wife starts getting upset, love you shnookums!), it hasn't been something i ached to jump out of bed in the morning to get started each day.  No, no it hasn't.  It's been more of the fall into bed with a sigh of thank-God-its-over-relief beaten together with (expletive)-it-begins-again-in-less-than-six-hours-dread.  This i would spare my sons if i could.

But now i wonder if i can?  Did i unwittingly raise my boy to be just like me or was he doomed to that particular ponderment anyhoo?  Is drifting aimlessly through life a genetic condition?  Geez i hope so, cause otherwise i'm going to feel really guilty.

God has a nosering

Naw, really, it's true.  i saw it.  A tiny little stud on the right nostril.  Coupled with the dimples and bored eyes it gave His smile a wryness that made me wonder what the joke was.

i saw Him a lot yesterday.  He was off-loading a truck and He looked disgusted with life while he smoked his cigarette.

He had a trusting, naive voice that might explain why His last contractor took advantage of Him.

He had red hair and looked really tired.

He was sitting in a tree on my way home and i have no idea why.

He was asian.

He drove a little red car.

He was putting out cones around His truck.

He was a pastor on the ipod reminding me that how i treat people is how i treat Him.  i wonder what He's doing today?

Mary and Joe's Tears

Christmas Eve is tomorrow and it's going to rain.

If I had been one of the seven dwarfs, my name would have been Mopey.  Or maybe Phlegmmy, though they already had a Sneezy.  

Just glad i don't live south of the equator.  i don't think i could handle Christmas coming at the beginning of summer.  i keep threatening to sell the station and move the family somewhere north where they still have winter.  Not just four months of March.  The missus don't hold to such talk.

Hmm, random interlude: preheated seat cushions are an outstanding idea.

It's just that Christmas in general is sort of a letdown.  There's all this build-up, all this anticipation, all this ceremony and in one short, busy day it's all done.  Nothing's changed.  Life grinds on as if nothing ever happened.  i wonder if Joseph and Mary felt that way the day after?  Did they expect the world to come bow at Jesus' feet the day He entered the world?  Instead of a handful of smelly sheep-rats.  i wonder if that was part of the reason for the stable?  So the shepherds would feel comfortable.  Mary and Joe must have had continual reminders that their son was not average by any means but did life for them really change?  Did the world?  No.  Joe went on being a blue collar schmuck and Mary kept a home in their hometown and the world went right on ignoring them.  Or more importantly, ignoring their son.

Just as it does now.  We carry around this knowledge, this gift: the son of God came to earth as one of us, took all the punishment for our sin and now we are free to have a relationship with God again, and the world acts like we're nuts.  God has done everything necessary to repair all the damage that we did when we rebelled.  And we give him the big cosmic busysignal and grind on with our pathetic attempts to find meaning in chaos.

No wonder it rains on Christmas.

Diary

Freezing rain.  Again.  Still hacking.  Snot production still at maximum discharge.  Third day off in a row.  Still no writing done.  Had two days off last week.  No writing then either.  Natives getting restless.  May have to offer Kenny as human sacrifice.

Hope ship comes in soon.

typical day at the station

It was not supposed to be my day off.  All my tools were still at work.  i wanted to take off tomorrow when she was coming home.  By ten o'clock i was bruised, bleeding, with arms full of fiberglass, had thrown out two deceased drills, borrowed a third with which i had drilled straight through a wire, arcing the bit and forcing me to try and repair it in the dark.  i only have one way of making sure it's the right circuit breaker that i have off, see aforementioned statement about tools being at work. i haven't gotten one thing done and this was one of the easy tasks.  i'm coughing up a lung, battling the urge for arson and curling up in the fetal position sticking one thumb firmly in my mouth and balling the other into a fist that i shake at the heavens, crying to God, 

"Why?  How in the name of all that's holy and good, does this enter into the Plan???"

Bullet holes along Ramble Road

i don't know if it's the white-noise jamming of life or the fractured state of my mind but i can't seem to form one coherent thought here.  My two readers can probably guess what that means...

• Bullet list!
• When did hunters go from the predominant species in Pennslobovia to a freakish curiosity that mothers bring their children outside to see?
• Relatedly, is our move as a civilization towards pacifism, anti-gun, anti-hunter, anti-fisherman a step towards perfection, presuming that Adam and Eve felt no need to kill, or a step towards feminization and are we losing something vitally masculine?  
• Speaking of emasculation, you're scared now aren't you?  Where's he going to go with this?  If i even see the word 'knife' i am out of here!  Fear not, hapless reader, i am feeling more metaphysical than that.  What i was going to say before i wandered down Ramble Road again, was that i really wish i had the gift of decisiveness.  i can never decide if my inaction is the result of a holy waiting on the Lord or a frightened staying of the course in order to avoid the consequences of stepping out.
• i think that's why i like Post-apocalyptic stories.  In my mind, the subterfuge and lies of civilization have been stripped away and life gets boiled down to a basic level of survival again.  
• In that vein, read the Road by Cormac McCarthy recently.  Loved it.  Man's a poet.  Disturbing, but great.
• And that's what makes me wonder... if life really was boiled down, stripped bare, hardened, would i still think it was so great?  When daily decisions have life or death consequences, when dinner isn't a question of what box to nuke but will we find something to eat if we travel in this direction or will we end up something to eat?  Would i long for these days when my direction is decided for me?
• Not that that makes strapping the workboots back on today for another nine or ten hours of mindless, friendless, rewardless labor any easier. 
• The key is to remember that it's not hopeless. 
• No really, it isn't.
• Honest.
• i hope.

Thank God for Spring

A smothered sun rises in a damp, gray sky.  Trees bare but for the moss, shiver in the cold.  A tailless cat huddles on it's perch and makes disturbing, human baby sounds for someone to feed it.  There's no fire in the stove.  His lungs are filled with sticky, yellow mucous.  He rasps, coughs, sneezes and blows into one tissue after another while sitting on an unsympathetic oak bench.  Life is grudgingly starting another day.  It has to but it doesn't have to like it.

Thanksgiving.  2oo8.

As is his custom, he composes a letter.  A letter to whomever cares to read it.  An open letter to God his father.  A letter of thanks.  This year it will be labor.  That makes it all the more important.  To thank in times of plenty, on rosy mornings when health, wealth and love greet you with a kiss is instinct, reflex.  Easy.  To find the blessings in the ashes of mourning, in the abscess of despair, in the full realization of the Curse, there, there are the times when thanskgiving is not an option but a need.  A rope to cling to.  A denial of aloneness.  A reminder that the dark, stones of the cell are not the extent of the world but that somewhere, love is desperately longing to be with you.  And walls of stone or despair while impervious to gentle touch, can do nothing to keep out love.

So while cat clings to it's hunger pains and cloud suffocates the sky, he looks beyond his mouldering, ailing prison to golden streets, crystal seas, palaces warmed and lit by pure holiness and one is never alone, not in body, not in mind, nor in spirit.  One is fully, completely, totally known.

And loved.  For though the eyes may not see, that has no bearing on it's certainty.  He cannot see Tokyo but he believes it exists.  He knows that while he shivers in Pennslobovia, another sweats in Peru, though he has no proof.  So it is with the New Jerusalem.  The new Zion.  It is as real, if not more so than the pain in his joints, the cold of his feet and the emptiness of his cup.  Autumn is upon us.  The Jack O' Lantern has trumpeted Winter's icy vanguard on the horizon.  The siege is coming.  With it: famine and pestilence.  Hard times, dark times are coming.  Persecution.  Suffering.  Death rides in that vanguard.  Men will become children.  Their bones turning to water.  Mothers will eat their young.  It will be a hard winter.  There will be days where it will be near impossible to find something to be thankful for but that will make it all the more necessary.  Thanksgiving in trial makes hope and faith into fact and truth.  In the dark, thank God for light.  In the cold, thank God for heat.  In the pain, thank God for healing.  Alone, thank God for being there.  

In Winter, of season, soul or history, thank God for Spring.

Quasimodo

Thanksgiving week.  Last year this time, i laid the tile floor in our upstairs bathroom.  Spent all weekend doing it.  Looked nice.  Was supposed to be the big push to get the bathroom done.  The last big hurdle.  

That bathroom has half-made cabinets in it with no sink, no countertop and incomplete wainscot half-way around.  Must have tripped on that hurdle.

Traditionally i try to think of things i'm thankful for this week.  Write some of them down.  Guess a patient, long-suffering wife is going to have to top that list this year.  

Forgotten's Lament

"Once there were two boys

one big and one quite little

Rascal were

the little cur

Plump around his middle."

from The Ballad of the Ballyhoo Gang

All Hallow's Eve has faded to unhallowed dawn. Princesses have awoke to their chores.  Traded their gowns for aprons.  Traded their dreams for yours.  The Weird and the Faerie take refuge in dream.  Goblins to their ghastly home.  Banshee and siren choke on their scream.  Ghosts retreat to chambers of loam...

All save one.

A wee spirit still haunts.  Tinkling chains in cobb-webbed halls.  A lantern, a single spark that stabs the dark.  A keening.  A child.  He calls.

Where is my brother?  Where has he gone?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my mother?  What'd i do wrong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my father?  Steady and strong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Where is my night?  Where do i belong?

Run-a-long.  Run-a-long.

Despair is muy macho.

It's getting harder and harder to stick to my principle of not writing negative posts.  In point of fact, i'd have to say i've broken it already.  Yeah, yeah i have.  i guess principles that are covered in dust aren't all that sticky.

Good thing it's a principle and not a law.

But here's the rub, a phrase i have no blinkin' clue as to the origin or meaning of, as a christian, i have the answers, i have the Way, i have the faith and the hope in a risen savior who is for me.  i am free, i am loved and gosh darn it, people like me.  Well, a few.  Does my mom count?  Never mind, she wouldn't count anyway.  The point is, all these things are true and yet... everyday is a featherweight bout with despair.  i realize it sounds better to say, "heavyweight" bout, but i don't come close to qualifying for heavyweight.  i'd be boxing the cobra-quick little latinos with all the tattoos.  And lately, losing.

And that's all i got to say about that.

Humble Pie Anyone?

They squared off as men in a killin' rage do.

i'll take a moment to say, that's not something i claim to understand.  It's not something i feel; i'm a slow wick.  The life drains out of me when the subject that's makin' me angry is human.  Like a circuit breaker trips and cuts all emotion until the moment passes.  Later, i'll be functionally psychopathic: stabbing tupperware and making death threats to Rottweilers but at The Moment, the moment of contact, during the incident, when the source of my fury is there furiously making fury, nothing, bupkiss, nobody home.  Can't explain it, but there it is.  

Duke is different.

So's the Hugh.  (Names have been nicked so that people can feel free to make stupid in their anonymity.)

The Hugh made a demand.  It doesn't matter what it was, it was something he needed.  Most people would call it a favor.  Bosses call it your job.  Nothing major, i didn't like it but i went along cause the Hugh is my boss.  That's what i do.  No big deal. 

Duke is different.  The Duke thought it was a big deal.  The Duke was no happy.  No happy a'tall.  But he held it in.  He had nothing to say to the Hugh when he showed up but for the Duke, that's progress.  i know the Duke wanted to rant and rave and defend his viewpoint.  i know the Duke thought it was unfair and would normally have told everyone within earshot.  But he was biting his tongue and going along with it.  i didn't like his 'tude but hey, he's my friend.  That's what i do.  No big deal.

The Hugh is different.  The Hugh felt betrayed.  The Hugh felt that he was the one making all the concessions and this was the thanks he got.  He needed something done and he got 'tude.

"The stage was set, the sun was sinking low down,

as they came to town to face... another show down.

The lawmen cleared the people from the streets,

"All you bloodthirsty bystanders, won't you try to find your seats..."*

When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, i was short one partner and the company's primary team, the only consistent team the Hugh has had in the three years i've worked for him, was gutted.  Cut in half.  And the Hugh was trying on rationalizations to see if any made his butthead look big.

Either man could have backed down.  Either man could have admitted he was wrong or at least took the time to see the other's side.  Either man could have been the bigger man by putting the other man's needs or wants ahead of his own.  

But the Hugh and the Duke are different.

And i wonder how proud they're feeling now?

*The Eagles, Doolin and Dalton/ Desperado Reprised

Stray bullet

Hopefully i'll get to do more with this thought later but for now this is all i got and i don't want to forget it so i'll tell you so you can remind me later....

Humble pie is not a desert,

it's a medicine.

Lament of Everything explained

17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' 
       "Cursed is the ground because of you; 
       through painful toil you will eat of it 
       all the days of your life.

 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, 
       and you will eat the plants of the field.

 19 By the sweat of your brow 
       you will eat your food 
       until you return to the ground, 
       since from it you were taken; 
       for dust you are 
       and to dust you will return."

And i wonder and write laments about how hard it is to just eke out a living.  Silly fricken.

One mississippi, two mississippi...

When i was a kid, back in the Early Neolithic, we played guns.  Kids around the neighborhood, and sometimes from distant neighborhoods would line up at the arsenal, our woodshed, and we would reenact the opening of SWAT.  Handing out assault weapons as the boys and girls, alright, girl, that Somers kid was a bit of a tomboy, but call her that and she'd deck ye, filed past.  Then we would fan out across the backyards, field and courts to do battle, hits recorded in the usual fashion: 

"Bam!  Got you, Nathan!"

"Did not!"

"Liar!  I totally blew you away!"

"I was prone!"  A sure defense.

"I could see your head, your dead!"

"Fine!  One...Two...Three..."

Now my eight year old kills kids and adults from Japan, Spain, France, the UK and who knows where in spectacular detail online.  There may be some debate about whether or not you should be dead but the computer has no doubts.  One thing is still the same however...

Count five mississippi and you're back in the game.  Might be a metaphor for life in that somewhere.

Open a window

It occurs to me that the Coop has been a rather disturbingly dank and depressing place of late.  There are two possible explanations for this...

one: that the world is a disturbingly dank and depressing place

two: i tend to write when i'm in a bad mood

i lean towards two.  The sun is rising over the Coop's surrounding woods and the ragged remnants of T-storm Hannah have moved on to worry someone else's weather forecasters and few others.  The light is tinted warm.  The air is cool and clean.  The Cricket Philharmonic is performing an operetta with the Avian Dawn Choir.  Even the Tabasco Cat is at peace.  There is much to be appreciative of on a quiet Sunday morning.  i just put down a marvelously dull and amateurish novel that gives me great hope of someday being published or at least the renewed belief that there is a need for better reading material.  Though it does raise concerns for a culture and society that would publish such drivel.  My family is healthy, mostly happy and sleeping soundly.  The coffee's good.  The bills are paid and the Iggles play at one.

So what's to complain about?

Yeah.

Lament of Everything (apologies for the profanities)

Spiders!

Spiders in my head

Cobwebs catch on everything

Cling to everything

Griming everything

Run to the North!

Animals bore into the North

Claws that tear, tear at everything

teeth gnaw on everything

shit on everything

Run to the South!

Teeth rattle loose in the skull

Wind bleeds through everything

Water soaks into everything

molding, rotting everything

Run to the East!

Rot, ruin, claws and teeth

Everything in the East

Bitter tears in the East

Let the weeds have the East

Run to the West!

Out the door and into the West

Run far from everything

hide from everything

leave everything

People!

People bore into my head

People cling to everything

tear into everything

shit on everything

Run to the West!

To where the sun sets

Let night fall on everything

hide everything

shit on everything

My God!

My God what have you done?

You took everything

You bore everything

Bitter tears for everything

Rain!

Your tears fall like rain

Like a flood on everything

wash away everything

fall on everything

O Heart!

Heart full of filth

Give up, give up everything

wash away everything

Let go of everything

Run to the Cross!

Cling to the cross, O heart

It paid for everything

renewed everything

makes sense of everything

Everything!

Everything is new

Everything is clean

In the heart

heart of my God 

simpler to be cynical

i wanted to have ideals,

everyone cries about global warming

but they tore down three hundred acres of forest next door

 and put up a housing development

and the temperature along our street went up five degrees.

so how is my planting one tree gonna help?

i don't actually give a Gore's hairpiece about the environment,

it's gonna do just fine, we may all get wiped out

but the environment will keep on truckin' in one form or another.

i wanted to love people for who they are...

but they're so darn stupid!

Let it be

Got blindsided by a memory last night.  Just came out of nowhere and cold cocked me whilst i was exiting the shower.  i have no idea if there is some significance to my condition at the time, frankly, i don't want to know.  My curiosity only runs so deep and it tends to hit a wall where nekkidity is concerned.  

The memory was this: i was a teenager, roughly seventeen.  We were going to the mall, a friend, his girlfriend and i.  We didn't particularly want to go to the mall but we were bored and that was one of the places we tended to go.  For some unknown reason, i got the idea in my head to go in clown make-up.  Not the full goofy suit with big shoes or anything, more of a Red Skelton kind of thing, hobo get up.  i probably just wanted to liven up what was otherwise going to be a really dull night.

Now, as you may well imagine, i was not allowed past the kitchen in this get up.  My father particularly was very adamant about me getting changed.  We still went to the mall, i just went as an angry youth who hated the world instead of a hobo clown.

My boy, the pretty one, has recently bought himself a screaming pink shirt.  It's not quite Neon, but they hang out at the same bar in New Hope.  Crap, i'm even ridiculing the lad in print!  Here's the thing.  The pretty one is a fairly confident individual.  He does what he thinks is cool and the rest of the world be darned.  But he can be influenced.  My mirth over this shirt, which he likes and my mockery have shaken his willingness to wear it in public.  i've seen it.  He had to build up to it's debut.

Why?  Why do i care what color shirt he wears?  Why should he care that it was social suicide for a guy to wear pink back in the bronze age?  i dunno but i have a guess.

Selfishness.

Father's think that their families are indicators or at least will be viewed by the unwashed masses as such, of their own character and its implicit failings.  A father who let's his son wear pink is raising an alternative lifestyle preferential child, i suppose would be the fear.  A father who let his son go to the mall in clown make-up would be picking him up from the police station later that night or have to answer uncomfortable questions at work tomorrow or at church on Sunday.  

i'm not saying that we have to let our kids do whatever fool thing enters their head.  This is wisdom, it requires discernment.  Knowing what's important and what isn't.  This all seems darkly ironic given some of my father's recent decisions but that's a story for another day.

i like to perform.  i didn't really know this about myself as a kid.  i've had to learn it since.  If, and that's a dangerously self-pitying word that gateways into a dark, self-pitying world if you live in it, if i'd been allowed to be myself a kid, what would i be doing now?  How would i be different?  Don't know, doesn't matter cause it didn't go down that way.  

But i think i'm going to stop giving my son a hard time about his shirt.

The plaid pants on the other hand...

Loons to Gulls

Two vacations in less than a month.  A week in Canuckada fishing with the Ballyhoo Gang, reinforced by Papa Panda and Unca Bubba and a long weekend at the beach with the Fricken Familia.  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.  We must be stronger cause we didn't die.  Despite storms, our own cooking, restaurant cooking, an outbreak of the Frumps, chubikinis, plywood tables passed off as 'beds,' killer moss-kweetos, touching fish, Jersey drivers, Canadian drivers, New Yorkers, and Deleware road systems (which i believe are just run-off from New Jersey--Traffic Circles fercryinowtlowd!), toll roads,

 toll roads, 

toll roads (you have to say it three times because that's how many booths you hit in a ten mile stretch!  They're designed that way though.  The plot is to get us to buy EZ pass so that we're used to the idea of being charged money without noticing just for driving over arbitrary, invisible lines.  Pretty soon they'll bang your wallet for fifty cents every time you leave your driveway.  And another dime for crossing your own threshold.)  Yes, we survived.  And hopefully we're wiser too.  A few things we may or may not have learned...

• the Ballyhoo gang don't like to touch fish
• if the nice young man at the front desk shows you a menu BEFORE showing you the dining room, he is probably trying to find a polite way of saying you walked into the wrong, damn restaurant.  They're not being snooty, they're being kind, you won't enjoy the atmosphere any more than the regular patrons will downwind of your fishy hide.
• seventies architecture is poop.  Block and poured concrete may be 'modern' and 'functional' but as soon as the paint starts to peel those spiffy hotels just start looking like government sponsored low-income tenements.
• Russians seem amused and pleasantly surprised when you thank them in their native language, Latinos less so and Canuckleheads just give you a pained expression of long suffering.  They've dealt with Yanks before, eh.
• i don't know why everyone's so concerned with self-esteem, just go to the beach and look at the swim suits, there isn't much of a self-esteem problem near as i can tell.  i'd have to say we need to start ridiculing people a little more.
• that if the Ballyhoo gang don't have a television or a video game they go into this eerie state of hibernation.  They must do this in order to survive the drought of mindless entertainment.  Their bodies seem to relax and they read a lot.  In one instance, i saw one of them drawing!  Must do more research.
• that i'd actually forgot how many stars there are
• night fishing, while profitable, is a whole nother endeavor entirely.
• it's also creepy
• that i don't love people the way God loves people.  i'm actually suffering from a nightmare where i get to heaven and its a lot like the line at an amusement park with noise and lights and humanity in all its inhuman variations, dropping litter on the floor and not caring and screaming, spoiled kids and noise and lights and cigarette smoke and stomach aches and so on ad nauseum.  And God says something to me like, "if you can't love these, then you don't love Me."
• that i really wish the kingdom of God was the beautiful scenery He made for us and not so much the people he put in it.  i find that a little easier to enjoy.  No offense, humanity.
• that i have a great family!
• that apparently my enchilladas beat Dos Locos' enchilladas.  Still a great place to eat though.
• that i will never go to the beach again without packing a sweatsuit.
• and a coat.
• and maybe wool socks.
• fish like to have their bellies rubbed
• a lot!
• it's gross
• i don't recommend it
• that i need more sleep

Good night.

(shrug)

My issue with God is this: that while i have clear evidence that He's speaking to me, orchestrating events, nudging me to action, taking a truncheon to me train o' thought as it were, while i am without doubt upon this, it is fact, it is bedrock far from a fault line, it is something really solidish, and my faith tells me that these speaks, orchestral movements, nudges and truncheon lumps are for my good and are born out of a magnificent, mysterious, merciful and unmitigated love for me...

i'm never quite sure what it is He wants me to do.

F'rinstance, that's a word where i come from, does the constant eating away of my traditional writing time and the lack of any energy to stay awake after work mean i am:

A-- supposed to flip the laptop out of my car window on the expressway, burn all the blank paper in the house, break all my pencil points, hammer my sharpener to wee pieces, dip all the pens in wax and give up writing as an idea, hobby, institution or possible career choice?

or...

B--get serious.  Knuckle down, carve out some real, designated, do-not-disturb time to commit to my art and who knows, let's go willy-over-teacups and maybe send something in to a magazine, editor, agent and see what happens?

or...

C--go to work.  i'm almost late already.

God's talking, is anybody listening?

Fell asleep in front of the Phillies game last night.  

This is not a new, nor particularly uncommon experience.  The Phillies seem to be a powerful barbiturate.  But that's not the point i'm trying to make.  

i don't have a teevee in our bedroom.  i have always resisted this.  i feel it is actually detrimental to a marriage.  The bedroom is the last refuge of the couple.  Where they are alone, naked, together before their God and each other.  Why would i invite Jay Leno into that.  But that's not the point i'm trying to make either.

So last night when i finally turned over the remote to the missus and stumbled off to the last refuge of the couple (yes, i appreciate the irony), i was surprised at how hard it was to fall asleep.  Here i had been unable to pay attention to a dramatic contest between athletes just moments before without my eyes closing of their own volition and now, when it was silent, dark and perfect conditions for catatonia, i was unable to still the voices in my head.  It was as if my mind had woken up.  And i realized something simple and obvious that i had never really thought about before, which is kind of the only realizations and epiphanies i have, but that's not the point either.

Y'see, i don't have a teevee in the bedroom, nor do i really like it on unless i'm engaged in watching it.  And here's not only why, but my point.  My really obvious and simple point, prepare to be underwhelmed.

Teevees silence the voices.  

When i was napping in front of another pathetic offering by the Phillies (not the point but still an aside i'd like to make; the Phillies suck) my mind was off.  Nothing.  Niente.  Incommunicado.  But, as soon as the sensory overload ended and my mind could get my attention again, the voices came back.  Thoughts, imaginations, prayers, they all crowded round again, each with its own agenda.  And like old friends i laid there and listened to their stories, points, petitions and anecdotes.  Much more entertaining than the tying run popping out to end the ballgame.  Somewhere in that Babel i'm sure the Spirit was whispering as He is wont to do as well and that's one voice i really want to hear.

Now i know people for whom the teevee is ALWAYS on, they even have to sleep to it.  i don't think that's wrong, it seems to work for them but i have never understood that before and now i wonder...

...is that so they don't have to hear?

Your grace is enough

Just a quick thought that i found really cool...

No sin, nothing i've done, no matter how heinous, how disgusting, how embarrassing, how demeaning, mean, spiteful, uncaring, selfish, bastardly, dastardly, mother blushing ignorant it was...

is greater in its depravity than Jesus' act of grace is in its ability to cover, forgive and redeem said sin.  

For me to even think so would be a sin of arrogance, like saying God isn't good enough.

Fortunately, His grace covers that too.

Are you kidding me??

Went to see WALL-E last night.  So what follows is a review of the human race.

We suck.

The entire premise of WALL-E is that man, in his rampant consumerism, has made the earth completely inhospitable.  We killed it with trash.  So, we take off for the sky in giant arks and leave behind an army of robots to clean it up so we can return.  Well, after seven hundred years, there is only one little robot left functional and he's not quite done yet.  Meanwhile, off in space, the human race just rides around in automated chairs, being waited on by robots and only interfacing with each other through heads up displays.  Everyone on the ship is about three hundred and fifty pounds and i'll be really surprised if the movie isn't declared "anti-overweightist" by easily bruised egos later today.

So, the robot falls in love, the human race wakes up, earth is resettled and the credits roll.

Now this is where it gets disgusting.  

You see, movies, especially pixar movies, have a tendency to put funny stuff at the end of the credits, so i'm more or less trained to wait until their over now.  Before they ended however, the house lights came up and an army of teens came in to do their job.  For in the theater, the very same theater where families, parents and children they are supposed to be training up, where they all just saw the same morality play about the dangers of laziness and vulgar consumption...

THERE SAT A FREAKIN' ARK LOAD OF TRASH!!!!!

Not accidentally spilled stuff, not the lost jujube on the floor, but half eaten buckets of popcorn still on the chairs, sodas in the cupholders and candyboxes everwhere!!!  Purposely left behind for the platoon of teens to clean up.

Now, i ain't an environmentalist, i happen to know there are much more important issues facing us all today.  But if we can't even figure out the message of WALL-E, then i seriously doubt the gospel has much of a chance.

Jeremiah 6:10

To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so they cannot hear. The word of the LORD is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it.

Sorry, more poetry

Forgotten how to live

Father forgive me

For i know not what to do

This unopened gift

That you gave me

Just gives me the blues

Can't sieze the day

paralyzed by doubt

Please tell me what to do

Gotta find a way

To figure this out

Before this day is through

One thing i know

Is no one knows

What my life is for

i know where to go

When the wind blows

But what to do with this oar?

Twas blind but now i see...

The funny thing about going blind is you have no idea how bad you've gotten until someone puts glasses on you.

Now, if i could just get corrective lenses for my point of view...

Approaching your exit

So why is that?  

(Readers alert: The author frequently begins posts with the inborn assumption that the reader has just finished reading the chronologically previous post.  There is no cause for alarm.  You have not failed some test or missed half of this post.  There is however no need to alert the author to the outcome of assumptions, he is already an a** and the reader is whatever the reader chooses to be.  No assumptions of the author can actually have any effect on the reader's intelligence or social standing.  Unless one of the reader's friends finds the reader reading this blog, in which case they may point and laugh.)

Why do i not do the things i want to do?

When i was younger, i remember trying occasionally.  With some moderate successes.  i equate those with baby steps.  Baby steps of a wandering scrivener.  But then something happened...

i became my mother.

Now, given some recent family developments, this is a loaded statement which i will not delve too deep into here but suffice it to say that by "became my mother," i only mean in a metaphorical sense.  You see, my mother is a wonderful, miserable person who has allowed her responsibilities to dictate her life.  Her life was all about what she could not do.  She is very intelligent and that keen intellect was finely tuned to the negative scale, she could always clearly see the reasons why something would not work.  No matter what lovely idea she had or dream or hope, there was always a reason why she couldn't do it or at least could not do it now.  As i became a teenager, i used to call her on this often.  i chided her pretty hard.  i know, i can hear the echoes of my voice mocking me through the ether of years right now.

i do not regret the decisions i have made, at least, not all of them.  i feel led to this spot.  i'm just starting to feel like Tom Hanks at the end of Cast Away, standing in the middle of the crossroads.

A bag, a bike and a bedroll

i am reading "A Pirate Looks at Fifty" by Jimmy Buffett.  It is a thoroughly horrible book and i don't recommend it.  In fact, what i recommend is that if you ever see a copy, you burn it.  Right there, where ever you came upon the filthy piece of excrement.  Just whip out the handiest form of fire starting apparati you have, lighter, matches, two sticks, oil soaked rags, magnifying glass, whatever and torch the puppy.  Then burn down whatever building it was that housed it.  The curse must be eradicated.  Then, find the owner and, if you haven't already, burn their house down.  

Don't come visit me however because as soon as i return my copy to the li-barry, i'll be going out to buy my own.  Though i may blowtorch the bookstore on my way out.  i'd better get it at Borders.

This book, this evil tome, aside from keeping me up right now vilifying it and looking up 'vilify' to make sure i used it correctly, yes, yes i did.  This book, more importantly, this author, this verschlugginah meatpie, is living my life!

No, i didn't write margaritaville.  i don't actually think i could string three chords together in such a way that would make people tap their feet much less throw money at me for a recording of it.  No, i'm not likely to become a flyingboat pilot and live on islands from Martha's Vineyard to the Carribees.  No, i'm not a saloon singer, a flyfisherman or writing a musical.  i'm not even sure i would want to do those things.  

But the things i do want to do, i don't do.  And that, me friends, cohorts and unlucky acquaintances, (as if there were more than one of you reading this...) is the rub.  Mr. Buffett, i am in no ways worthy of referring to him by his given name, does and apparently always has, done more or less, exactly what came into his balding little peanut to do.  It hasn't always been successful, it hasn't always been pretty but he did it and he learned what worked and what doesn't.

AND ...he has nearly a whole chapter on the essential gear of his expeditions and being prepared and his search for the holy grail of backpacks to carry it all in and anyone who knows me knows that pretty well sums up the chewy, darkmeat core of this fricken.  

What bugs me, what really shoves the shiv in me shins, what has me calling for arson on a Detroit Devil's night scale is this: that while Mr. Buffett's boyscout backpack is transporting snickers bars, bottled water, navigation gear, swag, and a big, fat wallet around the world...

My backpack doesn't leave my closet.

Wow! Two posts in one day!

This is something i wrote for a story i'm working on but it amused me so i thought i'd share...

When Resperignis grew old, he set his sons, Deorex and Matt, up as viceroys.  But they did not follow the path he had set for them.  Their favor was for sale.

So the clan fathers came to Resperignis and said, “You’re as good as dead and your sons suck.  Give us a king like all the Barbarians have.”

But when they said, “Give us a king,” Resperignis knew this was not wise.  He took flight to speak with the Royal Family.  And the Fire said, “It’s okay, Resperignis.  It is not you they have turned their backs on, but Me.  They no longer want Me for their Father, not that they ever have.  No matter what I do for them, they would rather be orphans.  So give them what they want but warn them what earthly fathers are like.”

So Resperignis told the Royal children everything that their Father had said.  He said, “If I appoint a king for you from among you he will lord it over you.  He will forget you are brothers and treat you like slaves, not as his children.  He will use you for his own purposes.  He will not love you; he will not take care of you.  And when he takes all you have worked for, including your sons and daughters, you will beg the Royal Family to save you but He will not.”

But the Royal children said, “Ah, Baloney!  When we have a king it’ll be great!  He’ll do everything for us.”

So Resperignis sighed and went back before the true King and told Him all that the morons had said and the Fire told him, “Don’t sweat it, go and do what they ask.”

So Resperignis said to the Royal children, “fine, whatever.”

dirt

i think about hard ground.  

i'm not talking ground WITH rocks.  i'm talking ground that IS rock.  i'm talking soil so dense, so resistant to being broken that nothing, but nothing will grow in it.

i think about comfort.

Climate controlled, cable modem'd, dorito munching comfort.  Little sanctuaries, little fortresses of control that we set up to escape what we cannot control.  Little schedules we maintain to bring order, so we know what's coming next.  Landscaped, widescreened, surround sound, havens where we only have to contact those we choose, those we like, those who do not disturb the comfort.  Put up a book and a latte', plug in the ipod and observe without interacting.  Do not touch, do not be touched.  Do not disturb.

Islands without need.

But wants.  Where there is no Need, Want thrives.  Want becomes Need.  Want becomes the goal.  All ambition is thrown into the Want.  Want disturbs the comfort, it disrupts the order.  The lacking must be filled so as to restore the comfort, fulfill the Want.  Want becomes god.  Or is comfort the god and Want the sacrifice he demands?  The commandment he gives?

I am Comfort, that brought you out of land of Need.

Pursue me with all your mind, body, soul and money.

Thou shall Want.

(long pause)

i think about suffering.

Suffering dispels want.  Suffering disrupts comfort.  Suffering exposes need.  Suffering is the plow.

The desert is comfortable.  Farmer's fields need.

One is lifeless.  The other sustains all life.

 

Got Pablo?

"I..." he paused for dramatic effect, "am Pablo!"

"You are, are yah?" she said.

"Si," he said and ran off an elaborate little mexican hat dance involving an imaginary rose in his teeth and a lot of abuse to her hardwood floor from his worn out, mismatched, cowboy boots and drew to its conclusion with a great deal of flourish and latino panache.  She didn't know the spanish for panache.

"And just what does a Pablo do?"

"I jest tole you, I am ...Pablo!" he reiterated as if that said everything.

"Let's assume I just moved here from some Pabloless backwater city."

"Oh, senorita, that would be a truly sad place to be."

"Undoubtedly, but, I wouldn't know what a Pablo was, would I?"

"No, senorita, you would no.  And that is why your face would be always frowning, like it is now."

"I am not frowning," she said.

"Si, you are, your face is like dis," and he showed her.

"That's not a frown, that's my usual expression," she explained.

"That is the expression of worldly pain, I know it well, it comes from too little Pablo."

Little Ditty Bout Jake and Dionne

Why?  She asks, not wanting an answer.

Cause, he says, cause he don't understand her.

Angry she gets, cause he don't understand her.

Why? he asks, but she will not answer.

Jumping the tracks.

Twenty-five minutes before work won't leave much time for a connected train of thought.  So we'll just derail the puppy and sift the wreckage...

• Eating out is getting to be a bad habit.  Time to pull out the crockpot.
• Planning meals, now that i think about it, was a very time consuming process.  One that ate even more into my writing time.  Lessee, eat well as constipated writer or write well with triple bypass, these are my choices.
• Hey, lookit that!  Two cars that were connected.
• Recently, i tried to reopen lines of communication with some folk.  Worked for as long as i wrote them.  When i stopped, they stopped.  Draw your own conclusions.
• i bleeding hate stink bugs!  Chitinous little nightmares sent to cloud my mind.
• Had four days off: Day one: Prepare for Party, Day two: Prepare for Party, Day three: Party, Day four: sleep off effects of days one through three.  
• We're getting old, almost said odd, not sure that wouldn't have been correct too.  Anyway, today's signpost of time's inevitability:  our parties consistently end before ten o'clock now and everyone's able to drive home.
• It's raining.  Again.  I have nothing but outside work.  Again.
• My eldest is apparently unable to self motivate at school.  Dangling carrots, breaking the rod over his back, looks like i have to do something.  But and this is a problem i seem to be facing all over the place these days, how do you help someone change their own character flaws?  Shield them from the consequences, yeah, i've seen that done.  Not usually to the subject's moral improvement.  But actually change them?
• Mynk's birthday was this weekend.  i'm pretty darn sure that everything else going on stomped that.  i'm also pretty darn sure that was my fault.
• My family has a history of not doing birthdays well.
• Not doing birthday's well...
• Freaking stink bugs are flipping scourge!!!!
• ...is indicative of a larger, more serious problem, i think.
• Time's up.

The downtime between victories

Losing sucks.

The system is corrupt.

It's a good thing we get Jesus' win/loss record.

Rambler's alert: i pretty much go off on a tangent for the rest of the post.  Those were the only real points i make as near as i can tell.  So unless you wanna see how deep the rabbit trail goes, you may wanna take those three and walk away a winner.  Otherwise...

There are degrees of losing.  

1. First degree losing is to just be beaten.  You didn't really have a chance to win, you were out matched, out played and not really fit to tie the other guy's gloves but you stood in there and took your drubbing and there's pride in that.  Perverse pride but a gap toothed grin over a beer is still a good beer.
2. Second degree losing is harder to take.  Second degree losing is what good rivalries are made of.  Two equal opponents slugging it out and never really gaining ground.  It's anybody's guess who will win each time these two come together and they can't come together often enough and they can't wish any harder to never meet again.  Second degree losing is the sharpening stone for a good team, they test their mettle and found it not quite up to Ginsu standard.  But there's next time.  Slightly more whiskey and bitter but still a good beer.
3. Third degree losing, is not losing at all.  It is when a victory that was rightfully yours is taken from you and given to an undeserving foe.  Third degree losing is a betrayal.  You are made to feel the anguish and responsibility of someone else's hideously poor or immoral decision making.  This is not a good beer.  This is not beer at all.  This is oxycodone and murderous thoughts of revenge.

Now some folk take it too far.  For some folk, and living in Philly one has a grotesquely fattening smorgasbord of good examples of bad losers, all losing is third degree.  There is always a reason why they were betrayed and there is always a scapegoat to pin it on.  Sometimes, in the case of Andy Reid, their right.  The rest of the time, they're just unwilling to see the facts. 

Fact is, sometimes you lose.  Ain't nothing wrong with that, the best teams still lose and most are better for it.  Losing reminds us that we aren't gods.  We are in fact losers who are raised to a better standard at times.   Losing sends us back home, it's introspective and hopefully we find ourselves and our true motivation again.  The christian comes home to the ever present embrace of the Father who loves us and gave us the greatest victory of all which frees us to truly play.  Everyone else goes home to ..whatever it is you wacko's cling to.  Losing prepares us for life, if you can't lose well, you will be tragically underdressed for ninety-five percent of what goes on in a day in the real world.  Losing sucks, but it ain't the end of the world.  It's just a good starting point for a beer with your friends.

So what do we teach kids when we try to protect them from all loss?  When we don't keep score in their little leagues?  When we give trophies just for being able to put one leg in each hole of their gym shorts?  i dunno, but i'm pretty sure i'm not going to want to live in a country run by them.  Those who have never lost can't appreciate winning.  They have no idea what it takes to achieve real victory.  They have no endurance when the race gets hard, when the enemy is bigger, stronger, smarter.  They have no way of facing impossible odds.  They have no cunning to find and exploit weakness.  Those who have never lost cannot win well either.  They cannot have empathy so they cannot have grace.  Those who have never lost cannot see themselves as losers justly deserving loss and yet being handed grace and victory by someone else.  When they win, they assume it was their birthright for they are gods and cannot lose, when they lose, they assume they were betrayed for they are gods and cannot lose.  They cannot stand to have the illusion burst so winning becomes everything.  For those who have a more realistic view of themselves, losing is just the down time between wins.

But third degree losers.  The truly betrayed.  What do they learn?  They learn that there is no point in trying because someone else has rigged the game.  They are at best, made to feel like losers; responsible for actions that were not their own, at worst, like victims of an unjust system.  

As a father, what do i tell my boys?  As a child of God, what is my Father telling me?

Can't wait till i can have a pint with Jesus in Jeremiah's Bar and Grill and laugh about lovable losers.

Eli's first cloud

Nihil.

Nothing.

Nothing says a lot to me.  Sometimes nothing says more than Nothing.  Nothing is what i stare at, what stares back at me, what considers me with it's cold, blank eyes.  Eyes alive and dead at the same time.  Eyes that say, this, this is your legacy.  This is what you have become.  This stark, whiteness, this pale desert.  This is the sum of your thoughts and since thought is the proof of being then i am by definition nothing.  For while worlds crash within and galaxies are formed in the tohu vevohu of my inner chaos and matter spirals outward to rebound off a cage of bone and groups around unseen forces with violence incarnate to brood.  While loathing and lament find common enemy in self and war is raged against hope and wisdom and the heart is torn asunder with trenching shovel and sanguine bayonet.  While roaring is my lullaby and shrieks are my sonnets and the shriveling coward in the corner bears suspicious resemblance to the cursing hiss going about his daily mining of salt without!  While fingers froth and mind seethes to reach out and finally, finally, finally ram home, prime and with the barest twitch of a twitching prisoner released from the torturous pit send all into that cruel, white desert a Rachmaninov eruption of all within to all without!

While all that rages within, nothing, nothing, nothing moves without.  Words smatter across the screen and are deleted by the next wave of doubt.  Conscience knows the need, Passion urges action, Lord of Lords, even Desperation knows that this drought must, must, MUST be broke before mind and screen crack with the dryness!

And yet, the words fell, feel, flee...

and still there is the blankness, the pale desert and a short stormburst of madness that the desert drinks in one gulp without softening.  And turns.  And waits, wears, watches the horizon for a promising cloud.

A silly li'l sonnet

She's sleeping when i leave

i'm a'bed when she crashes home

lying together, we live alone

Thus like one bereaved

A widower i grieve

as each day has flown

and we toil on our own

to her memory i cleave

To Hope, to Hope i'll cling

And throw off this hapless rider

May tomorrow's sunrise bring

An end to all our wrang-a-ling

And i'll wake up right beside her

and till it set to her i'll cling