Frosty

We have been visiting my parents in South Dakota. In my mind there are to types of visits with relatives. Those that go smoothly, and those in which all of the little idiosyncrasies of family drive one to drink (Unless one of the little idiosyncrasies is drinking in which case they drive you to find a meeting) I would categorize this trip as one of the former. However, one of the problems with visiting a place that is horrendously cold outside is that it makes me not want to go outside (unless of course the whole point of going to such a place is so that you can be outside i.e. skiing)

So I am trapped. Trapped in a prison of cold and ice and surrounded with all of the luxuries of my parents home: a well stocked fridge, cable TV, a huge house that the kids can run through without tripping over every single adult in the house, and three cars in the garage. Not that I want to go anywhere, after all I've been to malls, and everything else is covered in snow and ice.

I know that I am whining about having it too good, about having too much free time, after all isn't that what vacations are for? To get away from the routine and try someone-else's cooking for a while? But there comes a time when you begin to feel like a gerbil that has lived in the cage a little too long without anyone coming along to clean it. Not that I am not for wallowing in ones own crapulence, but that even this becomes, well, stagnant.

You know I think I am beginning to think that it is not too cold outside. I am encouraging J. to take a couple of the kids and go sledding tomorrow. There is even a little hill nearby where they can go skiing and snowboarding if they are feeling adventurous. But I haven't really thought too hard about what I would want to do. I'm feel a little too arthritic to go sledding or skiing. But a nice healthy walk might be just the thing. There are deer in parents back yard, so many that I would speculate that there are multiple herds. and there are squirrels so fat that you could mistake them for dogs, honest to god dogs.

However the thing I want to do most if I go outside is to build a snowman. Not any old snowman, but a very special snowman. For you see there is a small bronze statue in my parents backyard of a little boy pulling a wagon. The snow has covered the wagon and the boy simply stands there, with his arms crossed in front of him, standing as if he were waiting for something, and every time I walk by a window and catch this little boy out of the corner of my eye I would swear to Buddha that it was one of my children standing outside in their pj's looking all bronzen blue and frozen. I do a double take every time I see it, and have come to the decision that the little boy needs to become a little frosty the snowman with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.

So I am going to bundle up, put on some warm mittens and tromp through the crunchy snow. The deer will scatter and the squirrels will most likely steal the corn right off of the pipe, but that little boy needs some winter wear. A little transformation for the season, after all, Don't we all? Isn't that what vacation really is, a chance to put on a different costume for a day or a week. To walk around in another man's shoes and see life from a new perspective. I think that statue needs to be a snowman even more than I need to make him one. That is my little idiosyncrasy of the day. Hopefully it won't wear on anyone too much... "hey where did that statue go and where did that little snowman come from?"

Brain Doodling God

I hate it when you read something and your mind wanders in the middle of the sentence. You get to the last word of the paragraph, perhaps even to the end of the page, and I suddenly realize I can't recall anything that I've just read. This happened several times this afternoon as I was reading my friend Oleoptene's blog Betting against Pascal. I wanted very much to hear her thoughts and instead found myself reliving a conversation I was a part of in church a few weeks ago.

I can't remember how it started, but we were talking about the way in which god intervenes in ones life. I think I might have murmured something to the effect that I wasn't sure that god would intervene even if he could. Something like "God doesn't intervene." Memory is so hazy. I believe my comment was shot down by the associate pastor, but in a way that left the question of how god would intervene wide open. The conversation began to shift when one young woman spoke up. Something along the lines of "Wait. I want to know. Does God intervene or doesn't he?"

You know, the more I think about this, the only really clear memory I have of the conversation is the emphatic, even imploring manner in which she asked the question. I can't clearly remember what she said, not the exact words, but the way in which she said it still reverberates through me. "I want to KNOW. Does God intervene or doesn't he?"

Playing the Wii with my sister last night, she was quick to point out on several occasions that the game is always more enjoyable when one is winning.

Is it interesting to think that God would intervene on our behalf if fate were dealing us a rotten hand, but that God would never disturb a glorious run of good luck? Why would god interfere with good luck? God is good n'est-ce pas?

I can hear my children fighting. Big sister is tormenting little sister or the other way around. As a parent I want to intercede. My every pore screams to go and butt in. Sometimes I do, but usually I make things worse. My children can and do play well together, but part of playing is taking a few lumps. Rubbing my hand through my hair I can still feel the bumps of childhood indelibly marked upon my skull. Would you trade any one lesson from your life for something less?

I think the problem I have with the idea that god would intercede on our behalf is that it seems to take for granted the idea that god is good, or that god only wants the good for us? Please let some young Socratic pop up his head and say "pray tell Gorgias, what is the good and how do you know it?" That our understanding of good, and gods might be wholly incompatible.

I have know people, including myself, who have from time to time talked of life's trials and tribulations in a way that suggests that it was "all part of god's plan" or that "god sent me a lesson that I might learn from this" I would be very wary of praying for god's good graces to be visited upon me if this is the case. The cure might be worse than the disease.

But seriously. Years ago, I remember reading an interpretation of the Garden of Eden story as a separation of the immediate reality of God from man. Man didn't leave the garden, we are still here, only we have lost our intimate connection with the divine and have yearned for it ever since.

Now I am going to back peddle a bit and say I suppose it is possible that God intervenes, perhaps even that s/he is doing right now and keeping a blockage in my aorta from becoming a massive cardio-embolism. Or better yet, that through a bizarre connection of events involving a hummingbird, a cup of hot tea, several preschoolers in Connecticut and a dozen or so other rube Goldberg variations god has managed to stave off nuclear annihilation for another day.

I think it all comes down to a question of what is good. Does submitting yourself to the will of god mean that even at life's worst it is possible that god wants the very best for us? That God may even be actively working behind the scenes to procure the good for us, and that our limited perspective means that we simply needs be patient and wait for the will of the universe to unfold itself for us?

That is an ugly list of assumptions. I think that is why I prefer the four nobel truths. It is clean, elegant and, for the most part, summarizes my experience. That life is suffering, that all suffering comes from desire, that it doesn't have to be this way, and that overcoming suffering is possible if one is willing to do a bit of work on oneself. For myself that path also offers another possibility, namely to reunite myself with the intimacy of the divine, not by wagering my way into heaven, but through constant attentiveness to the now.

close calls

Watching a video at the unreliable narrator's website reminded me of a time I was on holiday with D. in Albuquerque N.M. We decide to visit the Albuquerque Zoo. D. loved(s) zoos and while I am a bit conflicted on the issue, we had a great time wandering around looking at all the exhibits. The one that sticks in my mind is, of course, the lion exhibit. We stood behind the retaining wall and barbed wire looking down at the pride when I noticed a small four by six observation window close to the place where several of the cats were napping. We wandered down and stood beside the glass wall for several seconds before I noticed one particular female lion peeking at us from behind a rock. Being a cat owner I recognized the crouch immediately. No sooner had I thought, "That animal is going to pounce" when the lion threw itself at us with all its might. There was a rather comic, if terrifying moment, as the body of the cat was flattened against the windowpane, Shaken, the beast picked itself up and wandered away. D. and I stood in a pool of our own urine for what seemed like several more moments before we gathered ourselves and moved on. Thank god the contractor didn't skimp on the plexi.

Driving to my parents tomorrow several people have encouraged us to "drive safely." Ya know, because a mini-van with four small children, luggage and presents usually encourages one to drive like an nascar racer. The sentiment is actually greatly appreciated but again it makes me think of the night I was driving my 73 convertible ford mustang through downtown Denver on I-25. I remember having a thought that I was going too fast and lightly touched the break. The next thing I knew I had done three complete circles in the middle of the interstate at seventy miles an hour and come to a stop on the side of the highway perpendicular to the road just as two eighteen wheelers screamed past me in quick succession. "Black Ice" I thought. I remained relatively unfazed until I rolled down the window. As soon as the cool night winter air hit my face I broke out into tears and didn't regain composure until I heard the sound of an SUV's horn honking beside me. They were checking to see If I was alright. I waved at them, rolled the window back up, tugged at my seat belt and limped into Greeley an hour later still shaken.

the lion sleeps

I woke up painfully early this morning, around 4:30. Unable to coax myself back into sleep I lay on the couch listening to the groans and squeaks of the house. The "silence" was broken but the thump of little feet plopping down out of bed and scurrying down the hall. The girls are still young enough that they each have their own distinctive shuffle. G. crawled up beside me on the couch and showing none of her fathers resistance to sleep was quickly murmuring dove-like coos punctuated by little wheezes and gasps. As sweet as my daughter is in these moments there is one thing for certain, I would never be able to sleep now. Little elbows and knees are the equivalent of sleeping with a bag of stones. I suppose the easiest solution is to lead her back to her own bed and then make for mine and hope not to disturb J. or baby. But I have never been, well, resolute in executing this kind of plan.

Sleep is precious, and yet I seem to continually make poor choices when it comes to acquiring any. Some of the problem, to be sure, is born of the best intentions. I will usually wake two or three times in a night. Usually once between twelve and two, and then again closer to morning between five and seven. Once woken it usually takes time to fall back to sleep and am often fearful of waking J. during these periods of restlessness. The quickest solution is to move to the couch. However this avenue can be blocked if one of the girls, in their own sleepwalking daze has managed to stumble there before me. If this is the case, I usually opt to take their bed instead, unless, of course it is G. who happens to sleep on a top bunk, the ladder to which requires a kind of acrobatic grace to ascend which I utterly lack at two in the morning, much less any other time. The other option is couch number two which shares none of the comfy qualities of its neighbor. Basically I have become like a house cat, roaming through the house in search of a nice quiet place to lay down for a few hours, my only strength is that I try to keep consecutive hours of rest and not nod off at odd hours of the day curled up on the divan or in the red chair that no one ever sit in unless guests have taken all other available seating.

I keep telling myself that these little interruptions of sleep will pass as the kids get older, but I suspect the truth is that I am teaching myself bad habits that could last a long time. My Grandfather was asleep by eight o'clock every night and up before four in the morning. "It is the best time to get anything done" he used to tell me. My father seems to share in his father's propensity for early mornings. As a teenager I would literally train myself to sleep later and later in the mornings, only to rise to my father's recriminations. I suppose at the time I thought it was because he was jealous, but I suspect now it was because he had trained himself to sleep in the one way that best suited his lifestyle.

My god, can you imagine? I have always supposed that like myself and my dear wife, most of us are struggling to get the prescribed eight hours and long for those mythic saturdays when we can eek out just a few hours more. Could you imagine getting enough sleep every night? It would be like finding the perfect job with the corner office. I am envious of people who rise and fall with their internal clocks, always managing to find the exact right amount of sleep to fit their day. Surely there can't be such a person? If there is, I think I would hate them.

Holi-daze

Woke up this morning feeling feeling fine, totally unprepared for the day ahead. That is the strange thing about life, you can wake up one day and, whether you know it or not, it might be you last day on earth. Other days are more pleasant. They can be full of unsuspected surprises, or they can be like today.

"You are a liar Daddy."

and then

"Make me Pancakes."

and then

"Bring me my clothes."

and when I didn't take the bait on any of these, it was

"Arrrrrrunnnnnnngghhhhhhhh...." for five minutes

Later, holiday traffic tried to kill me, small children seem completely incapable of understanding the concept of the lollipop bribe, and a book store clerk seemed obsessed with offering me service, even after I had shooed him away for the sixth time. It is all madness I tell you. But not all the time.

J. and I went out the other night.

"I think I am dead" I told her.
"Why?"
"Everything is going so well. Nothing ever goes this perfectly." I beamed.
"Am I dead too?"
"You have to decide that for yourself."

Some days I wish the universe would make up its mind, having a great date with my wife one moment, only to be cast down into shade where we are denied, like Tantalus, even the simplest pleasures of life in the next moment.

"Don't get comfortable" I think to myself. "O.K" I think, but It feels like a lie. When you love life how do you convince yourself to mistrust it? Conversely when you hate life how do you ever trust it again?

When I was sixteen I took everything in my parents medicine cabinet because I was furious with life. Nothing, it turns out later, was fatal. The nurses were very sympathetic. "Anything I can get you" she said "anything at all." This offer to a sixteen year old boy by a blond twenty something nurse filled many a fantasy while I lay "recuperating" in the hospital.

The problem with making the decision to take your own life is that, for many years afterwards, it becomes THE solution to virtually any major problem. Once you have made this choice it becomes a reasonable possibility that must be weighed alongside all others.

Today I am fortunate that the only thing I thought about was calling J. We are both running around trying to get ready to go to my parents house for a week. There are so many little chores to get done, it seems at times like they can't all be accomplished before we leave. "How are you doing" was the tenor of the conversation.

"If you're taking a trip to Crazyville, I will see you when you get there."

She laughs. Holidays are crazy. Everyone says so. Sometime good and other times nuts. You have to take the good with the bad, roll with the punches, let it be like water off a ducks back, and so forth. I'd like to say I look into the rearview mirror and see my daughter smiling at me and think "thank god I wasn't successful" but I can't,I am still much too selfish and I still get way too nuts to think this way. But I am thankful to be alive, and believe me that is progress I can be thankful for.

I can't remember the last time I thought about taking my life. It's been a few years at least. Still, I hate the feeling I get when it seems like the universe is trying to pick a fight with me. I want to explain to it:

"Look I am not going to crash my car, fight with my daughter, or buy that overpriced sweater even if it is on sale."

However, I suspect that, like the antagonistic diatribe of my daughter, the universe doesn't really care whether I engage or not. It is going to do whatever it is going to do, and all that is left for me is that I get to decide which part of the conversation I want to join.

Urban Zombies

Another early morning. So far Xmas break feels about like any other week, though J. and I were able to sneak out last night, grab a couple of yellowtail hand rolls and pop into a mall for a few hours of shopping.

"I am done with my mall shopping." she said afterward with a bit of satisfied glee. I think anytime one who can say this understands it comes with a certain sense of relief.

D. and I are at her swim meet again this morning. Two events. They should go quickly. Watching her warm up from the bleachers I can't help but think of my own brief swim team experience.

Like an echo in my mind, "I'll be home for Christmas, you can count on me" loops over and over again.

We moved to Sewanee, TN when I was D.'s age. The move interrupted my swim team experience. I kept swimming for for one more year but the bullies made practice almost impossible. Every day I would come home with new bruises, towel welts, missing articles of clothing, flat bicycle tires and an assorted set of tears, stories in injustice and a deflated self esteem.

My Grandmother gave me a Daisy brand BB/pellet pistol when I was nine. When I gave up swimming I spent most of my time hiking around the woods behind our house taking aim at the myriad of targets to vent my frustration.

"What is it Daddy?"
"It is a bird, Baby."
"What happen to it?"
"I don't know, I think a cat might have mangled it."
"What do we do?"
"Well" I said with a sigh "I guess we will have to put it out of its misery."

I climbed into my car and took a pocket knife out of the glove box. D. watched on with a kind of clinical fascination as I lifted the blade in one hand even as I steadied the bird with my other.

"Will it hurt?"
"It is already suffering honey. We are going to put an end to it."

I reached down and drew the edge of the knife long its neck in one smooth gesture. I pulled my hand away. The body of the bird lay motionless for a moment.

"Is it dead?"
No sooner had I said yes when the body of the bird shuddered and came still. D. freaked out.
"What was that!" she shouted in near hysterics.
I grabbed her and put my arm around her. How do you explain the death shudder to a nine year old?

Walking though the woods with my gun I lifted the sights to the edge of a broken branch 20 yards away and squeezed the trigger. The "branch" fell off the tree and and began to flop and cry on the ground below. I had shot a bird. The pellet hit it in the head, but because the gun was not very powerful, and the shot had been taken from a distance, the bird was only wounded. I hadn't killed it.

I walked up to the bird. It was laying on a bed of leaves heaving great gulps of air, its chest rising and falling rhythmically. I felt like crying. I looked around. I was all alone. No one had seen it happen. I felt like running. The bird began to flop again. It totally freaked me out. Finally it came to a rest. I knew what I had to do. I lowered the sight of the gun level with the birds head. Its black eye seemed to stare right at me. Slowly I pulled the trigger.

ghosts

Pulling into the driveway last week, I noticed the back gate of our neighbors house open. The house has been abandoned since she died last spring. I peered over the fence into the overgrown yard. The back door was wide open. Tentatively I decided to investigate.

"Hello? Is anyone in here?" The house was in total disarray. There was a pile of CD's and VHS tapes in the middle of the living room, the labels torn or missing. Most of the furnishings had been cleared out. I walked into the kitchen. "Hello?" Empty wine bottles lined the rack above the stove. I thought about my neighbor sitting on her front porch smoking her menthol slims and drinking a bud light. "Hello?" The noise of dripping water was coming from down the hall. The bathroom? From all apparent reports she had died in the bathroom. The investigation was over. I decided to leave and call the police.

D. took the news that I had ventured into the house very poorly. "You mean you went INSIDE?" Ever since she has developed a slight phobia of our hall bath.

Morning. Rosy fingered dawn was stretching the arthritis out of her joints.

"Hang on baby, I left my coffee inside."

D. looked from me to Laura's vacant house to the car. "I'm coming with you!" she said.

The forty-five minute drive to her swim meet was punctuated with long tired silences. "So, let me ask you a question." I said.

"Yeah?"
"Is it, you believe in ghosts, and they creep you out or do you just have a bad case of the willies?"
"Both."
"Yeah." I said, the fog of morning creeping over my brain. "So what do you think ghosts are?" I asked, probing gently.

"Souls."

"Hmmm. No wonder you're so jittery. That would creep me out too."

No response. "Do you want to know what I think ghosts are?"

Sigh. "I guess so." she complained.

"Impressions. Like footprints in the sand." She thought about this for a minute, but didn't seem eager to talk more about it. Finally I decided to add a parting thought. "Have you ever had a conversation with someone who was talking in their sleep?"

"Yeah."
"I'll bet it seemed to make sense at first and then got really strange."
"You want to know who I had a conversation with?"
"Do you want to tell me?"
"G." she said excitedly. "I asked her what she was doing, and she said 'popcorn' and fell back to sleep."
"That's funny."
"Yeah" she said smiling.
"My point is, ghosts are like that, impressions, like footprints, but footprints can't get up and walk around. And while a soul's impression is more... complex, ultimately it is just an impression, It might seem like it is interacting with you, but pretty soon it stops making sense,"
"I guess."

Silence. I thought about ghosts for a while, trying out my description with my own experience: walking into my grandparents apartment after my grandfather died, or my grandmother's body lying motionless on a hospital bed. The thoughts feel foreign, strange. What were these memories?

I looked at the clock and made a few mental calculations involving distance and driving time.

I thought about people I had known, people I might never see again, or have rediscovered on the internet, on face-book, or in blogs. Sometimes these re-encounters feel so familiar and other times not.

Descartes compared memory to impressions in wax. Its funny, the description seemed so medieval when I first read it that I immediately dismissed it out of hand. Memories seemed more fragile than plastic, at least at the time. Like wisps of smoke floating on the breeze before a strong wind came along and extinguished them forever.

Nowadays memories have more life in them. They can pop up unexpectedly, or dissolve before your very eyes. There is a kind of melancholy whimsey about them and a plasticity. I seem to be forever mooshing them into one form or another only to have them spring back to their old selves with startling longevity.

I stare forward through the windshield. "Ghosts." I mutter, turning off the highway.

"Daddy! Please, I am trying to sleep!"

Who are we?

There is an old woman sitting crouched in the corner. Her wrinkled hands on her cheeks, she is close to death. Beside her are a young woman, and a strange bird, possibly a dove. Though she is at the end of her life, she sits on the left most edge of the canvass; she is the beginning of the story, the past and the future. In her, we are meant to see ourselves, our mortality.

The overcast morning is still and dark and everything around is silent, a kind of glorious moment for reflection, and all I want to do is curl up beneath heavy down blankets and sleep like ol’ Rip van Winkle himself.

I think about sleep a lot. I think about it in the mornings, climbing out of bed early to get the children ready for the day. I think about it in the evening as I slumber down the hallway, past the boxes of unfinished projects, unshelved toys, bits of paper and unswept dust bunnies that can wait till morning.

I woke up and hour early Friday and drove to school to take my final. Take seems like the wrong verb for an experience that is akin to a defendant sitting in the witness box being grilled by a group of seasoned prosecutors hell bent on sending you up the river.

“Well, you passed.” My professor said “but what was up with that piece of shit artist statement?”

I emailed the statement to no less than four of the seven faculty members the week before looking for feedback and didn’t receive a single response. Well, that is unless you count the email from one faculty member the night before explaining that he wasn’t going to look at the statement sent a week before because he was far to busy today.

Still, criticism aside, I passed, which makes me wonder why I am picking the experience apart in my mind. I begin to wonder if I am only happy when I am complaining. That and the surreal response I had to the whole damn affair.

I spent Saturday with D. at a swim meet as an official timing the competitors. The chlorine air made my eyes burn and my head throb. The stopwatch in my hand, the pool beneath my feel, the mechanical pulse of the start gun, watch, wait, listen. Later, in the evening J. and I went to the church Christmas social at another couples home. J. left to pick up the children and I stayed behind for another hour chatting and having fun. The feeling of exhaustion swept over me all at once and I began to make my goodbyes.

“Where are you going? If you wait a while we can give you a ride.”
“I think I will walk. It’s only seven blocks. I think I’ll manage.”
“Are you sure?”

The cold air was like a tonic.

The next day at church there seemed to be sentiment of general amusement at my decision.
“It was only seven blocks. You would think I was walking home in a blizzard.”
“Nobody walks in the city” said J.
I tried to picture myself, as I thought they might have, lying passed out in someone’s lawn, or huddled over a hot air grate trying to fend off the chill in the air.

The Chair said his piece and walked out of the studio. I was left there standing like I had been gut punched with my mouth gaping open in disbelief. I fumbled for the edge of the door and pushed it shut just as the first spasm of tears began to well up out of me. The feeling was one of confusion, panic and fear and I pushed them down again determined to make myself feel happy, but instead felt only the dry stale air in my lungs as I heaved a great sigh. I put my hand on the door knob and imagined for a moment that I would cross the threshold in jubilation, but as the door swung wide I had a kind of panicky feeling like I had been inside for hours and that people had begun to wonder where I had gone.

I think of Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian Landscape “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”

There are many interpretations of this work, as there are of life. Many eyes seem poised to make an accounting for our behavior, some favorably, other with a bemused indifference.

"I believe that this canvas not only surpasses all my preceding ones, but that I shall never do anything better—or even like it.”

Standing in front of my installation the night before the final I felt an indescribable feeling of accomplishment. Everything we have in life goes into these moments. There is a kind of clarity that comes from these experiences, from intense focus brought about be repetition, the cold air on your face, and by the feeling of having done the best you can and given all you have. How can someone saying "Well, you passed" compare? I think about Gauguin's painintg full of women, full of vitality, of potential, all is creation, birth. The end is but a beginning.

Merry X-mas

The posting for my job went up this afternoon. (That's right- I get to reapply!) I took the job on a temporary full time basis with the understanding that I was welcome to resubmit my application along with everyone else in 1 year.

Forecast note:
While the Doubt Bunnies are inevitably bound to dance a jig across my front lawn, there are none about in in the foreseeable future.

No Drinking Birds

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, begins to take on new meanings. Listening the the radio, I hear a woman say "I am going out today to spend, it's to help the economy, right?" She is so matter of fact I want to cry. I feel something on my lap. It is my jaw.

I remember the weeks after 9/11. National mourning turned to national outrage and vehement patriotism. Flags began to appear in the rear windows of the passing SUV's, then on the little antenna's of Honda Civics, then finally in the gutters beside the storm drains and in the streams that run through the watersheds.

There is something odd about good intentions. Hell I wanted to buy a damn flag. They must have been putting something in that water for that to happen. I remember walking into a gas station thinking "maybe they sell flags here" then catching myself "WTF!" It isn't that I am not patriotic. I am just not sure how much of my patriotic sentiment is going to be captured in a piece of old glory flapping from my antenna, (admittedly it would look like the flag flying over Fort McHenry, and that kind of rustification has a certain appeal, still.)

I think about the looks on my students faces. "We don't celebrate Thanksgiving."
"Why Not!!?"
"Well, for one thing, the only person in my family that eats turkey is my wife." It is surprising how many people are actually satisfied by this statement as an answer. After all, doesn't Thanksgiving equal turkey? "None of our extended family lives close by." Heads begin to nod. I am reminded of the infamous drinking bird. Once the Drinking Bird's head is dunked in water, it will begin bobbing back and forth taking "drinks" with every bob. "With the newborn, Thanksgiving is just too hard to orchestrate." By this point I have convinced the masses. If I were running for office I might have to work harder, how much harder is hard to say, still I am dissing Thanksgiving, the holy of holies, the American holiday, I don't think you can get elected to public office by telling people that Thanksgiving is a sham. I am pretty sure that if you even suggest as much, you have pretty much signed the death warrant on any hope of public office.

Even so, our Thankgiving was actually pretty good. J. found another family, friends we've known for a few years now, that also don't have extended families close by. We combined our two dinners and actually made something of a feast. Later we played 'Apples to Apples' and 'Spy Alley' before settling in to watch the 'Reduced Shakespeare Company'. D. said it was the best Thanksgiving she had ever had. I think she might be right. At least in recent history. It had a... casualness, you might call it, about it that was deeply satisfying.

As far as black friday goes, I didn't make it to the store today, even though D. insisted that everyone go to Target, on principle, I believe. I stayed home with the baby and played the Wii, drank a beer and made quiche, salmon and twice baked potatoes so that the hearty shoppers would have something to sink their teeth into. Tomorrow, instead of going out shopping, I will head over to a clients house and hang a painting they bought last week. J said it will help pay for x-mas. I suspect she's right. Pretty soon I will make my way out, brave a few high end specialty shops, (I stay away from malls), make a few choice purchases and then settle back and rest on the laurels of my shopping acumen. No drinking birds.

Hoo Hoo!

This is an announcement
For the transcendental run
The train now standing
Leaves for higher planes
Due to a derailment
There will be no other train
So why not hop on this one?
Hear the porter's glad refrain
Each carriage is connected
As is every single train
The rails all form a track
Which is a link within a chain
The chain's connected to another chain now
You will need no ticket
If you wish to ride on this train
Chorus:
All aboard the express kundalini
All aboard the express kundalini
All aboard the express kundalini
The song is in your heart
Your heart is in the song
The song is of the earth
The song is of the sky
You are disintegrating
Into everything around
Reintegrating
The worm we dug from higher ground
You have let go of ego
Ego is no longer you
Closer to nirvana
Since the porters whistle blew

The perfect gift for exes

Stumbling around the internet looking for gift ideas I found this gift idea for the broken hearted ex

wednesday morning poetry jam

J.'s notebook rumination reminded me of a poem (such as it is) I wanted to share:

Here the here
here the quiet
here the here and now.
Here, somebody bring me another round
Before I break it down
Before its broken down.
Here 1, 2-
Here 3, 4.
1, 2, 3, 4; 1 2 3 4
Here the hurling hurdy-gurdy
swirling spilling down
Here the quiet (silent yearning)
Here the here and now
Here, before I break it down
Before its broken down.
Here the time of timeless turning
here the yearning for the now
Here candescent incandescent
smiling of a smiling clown
Here the turning, endless yearning
Here the faceless endless brow
Here the bush is finally burning
Here the smiling of a smiling clown.

grateful

My grandfather made a note at the bottom of this photo just before he died. You can still see the blue ink of his Bic pen. “My grandfather A.” This is my grandfather’s grandfather Anderson. I don’t know where he was born, but the story goes he came across the plains with Custer’s 7th cavalry, and would have died at the battle of the Little Bighorn, but was separated from his group in Vermillion, South Dakota after having caught the flu and was later reassigned. I have no idea how much of that story is true, but you have to admit it is a pretty cool picture to have in your family closet.

It is a strange thing how history unfolds itself. How some things happen for good or ill, and we are all the time left to wonder what to make of it. I know that I have blogged about this from time to time, and yet it still fascinates me. It came up again today in church, and I found myself playing devil’s advocate with some of the things that were being said. Things like: “God is good.” and “I pray for acceptance.”

I am an absolute coward when it comes to prayer, that is, I pray in moments of desperation and then wonder at my foolishness later when things have run their course.

“I don’t think of God in these terms, rather God is something wholly other. Not only can we not say whether God is good or bad, it is the acme of foolishness to ascribe this kind of thinking to God at all.”

I was trying to say that, as far as our spiritual growth is concerned, things might seem good or bad to us, but that we couldn't really know what good and bad events will bring and more importantly that to ascribe that kind of thinking to God is really dangerous. Terms like “good” and “bad” are the slippery slope to: “why do bad things happen to good people” or “it is god’s will that some should starve with others do not.” In retrospect I am not sure if that is what I said at all.

Some would argue, in class that is, that God tries to teach us by our errors and our suffering. I know that I have been guilty of this line of thinking in the past as well. Well, one thing I heard that resonated with me was that “God is shaped by our thinking.” As soon as I heard this I knew that while suffering as a means to spiritual awareness has been described in many ways in many books and by many holy people, the kind of “suffering” that I have experienced could not be counted among them. I have it too good.

Seriously how do I suffer? Let me count the ways. Jenny and I were separated. That time has to be on the top of the list. My grandparents died. That was pretty horrible too. Crippling back pain, loss of jobs, financial insecurities, somehow in the grand scheme of things I don’t think it all adds up to much. In reality, even at my most crazy, I am pretty grateful.

I try to play a game with myself. It may sound cynical but it is nice. I try very hard to pinpoint the moment of the day when I am feeling my best. “This is the best I will feel today.” I know it sounds a little crazy but it is nice because it keeps me in the moment, for a time anyway, and allows me to find a bit of time to think, “wow, I have it really good.” As a side note, this usually occurs in the morning, sometimes in the car, usually when I have managed to shrug off sleep, the coffee is kicking in and the day is still full of possibility.

Anyway, after class I found myself thinking that I wasn't really sure if I believed if God was love, if God gave me life, or if I knew anything about God at all. I guess in moments like these all I really know is that I am grateful.

The Great Chili Cook-Off

Five thirty in the morning, cats tangled around my feet as I stand beside the stove, an array of spices, onions, garlic, sage and oregano, meat and peppers cover the counter. I am making chili. The kettle boils. Slowly I lower several ancho chilies into a cup of boiling water. Later they will be purred and mixed in. In moments like these, cooking stops being about the preparation of food and becomes alchemy, the transformation of base materials into gold.

You come to us
from another world

From beyond the stars
and void of space.
Transcendent, Pure,
Of unimaginable beauty,
Bringing with you
the essence of love. -Rumi

One of the judges looked me in the eye. “If there was a category for most… unique flavor, you would have won hands down.”
“Thanks” I say. It was a compliment.
“Your chili was really different.” She pauses, “it reminded me of a Cincinnati chili with that dark cinnamon/chocolate flavor.”
It’s called mole, I think to myself. Clearly the judge is an expert, able to discern the various regional dialects from a few scoops of meat and sauce. Feeling a bit sarcastic, I hang around and joke with my colleagues. I am not bitter.

“Your chili was sweet” Said another judge. "I liked it."
“The my kids like it that way. I respond. Everyone laughs.

Later I pop my head into the Dean’s office. “We missed at the Chili cook off today.”
“I wanted to give the other contestants their space. You see, I won last year.”
“You won the golden spoon?” I ask, impressed.
“My team did, mostly they just let me stir the pot.”
“Care to share your recipe?”
She looks nervously at the door then back at me “Well,” she hesitates, “I can only tell you this: the secret is in the meat.”
Quickly I make a mental note of this. “Yeah.” I say nonchalantly. “I used an organic ground chuck, how ‘bout you?”
She smiles at me, but doesn’t say a word. She is good. “I’ve really said too much already.” Embarrassed for having put the squeeze on my boss, I begin to tell her about my method. “Oh god!” she said. “You should have taken your pot of chili to Turtle Creek, you would have won hands down. You got way too fancy! You have to remember, your campus is out in the country a bit. You need to dumb it down. Throw in a handful of sticks and grass next time, you’ll fare much better.”
I cannot contain my mirth at this statement and laugh out loud. “Have a great holiday” I say, standing to leave.
“You too” she replies.


post-script
There were no vegetarians entries (duh-this is TEXAS.) After sitting around watching people eat chili for two hours (I was on clean up and had to stay) I am dying for... a chili dog of all things, tofu, beans, mustard, relish and onions please!

Identity Redux

Her workshop it littered with crayons, marker, and an empty container of Elmer’s glue. Scissors snip. Bits of paper fall through the air and come to rest on the carpet. Like marble dust from Michelangelo’s chisel.

“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”

The warm air from the heater makes my eyes feel dry. I blink until a tear beads in the corner of my eye. The radio is on. Renee Montagne is interviewing Annie Leibovitz. “…the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul — I don't think this is possible all of the time."

G. looks up at me, smiling. In her hand is a note card covered with patches of color. Her name, clearly written, is embellished with more swatches of color and a lattice of swirls and polka dots, followed by the numbers 6,5,4,3. The five is written backwards.

“I made this for you Daddy.”
I love these kinds of gifts. I tuck them in my pockets like Zuzu’s petals.

I look at the dashboard. One of G’s “butterfly” creations covers the tachometer. The air from the vent makes the edges of the paper flutter.

I think about the interview. How does an artist capture “Soul?” Definitions are definitely in order for this conversation. Are we the mean bits of clay and gristle that covers up a shiny pearl? Or is who you are the culmination of what you have done, what you do, and what possibilities lay in the future; a definition that is only complete once you are no longer doing?

I remember the conversation in church. “We are changing all the time.”

I imagine my soul like the core of identity. “Is there a soul, or just me? What would it look like?” I think about this for a minute. It is a chalice, tucked away in some little nook behind the church alter. “To hold my life’s experiences” I muse. My mind floats over the choir of some great cathedral. Gliding forward, I hover a moment before the reredos then reach down and part the wooden doors that conceal the goblet. It is encrusted with jewels. A momentary flash of light blinds me. Looking down I can see a slick oily liquid that fills the basin. I can see my reflection on the surface. Is it wine? Oil? I think about the taint of sin. Was it Adam that changed or the world he lived in?

There is something on my face. The reality of it snaps me back into the present. It is a bead of moisture rolling down my cheek. I reach over and turn the heater off. My eyes lower one more time to G’s butterfly. The soft cerulean blue oval winks up at me.

The hard stone is bitter, cold and rough. The body, enslaved in matter, twists, yearning to be free. “I’m in here” a voice cries. “I am in here. In here. In here.”

identity

The chorus sings in my head.

What if God was one of us

Just a slob like one of us

Just a stranger on the bus

Trying to make his way home

Is it because it is Sunday? Sundays are fun-days, I hum. The unbidden memory of a photograph floats to the top of the pile: an Easter photo of my parents and siblings standing in front of the church wearing home sewn shirts. It was sometime in the early seventies. Pastels and wide lapels, the smell of eggs benedict lingers in the corner of these memories, a sunny Sunday brunch at a country club, where all the guests line up at the buffet. At the end a man in a tall chefs hat carves thick slices of ham off the bone and behind him in a field of sun drenched tables covered in white linen a young woman plucks a wistful tune from an enormous harp.

“I don’t like the donuts that are left.”
“Even the chocolate ones?”
“I like the type we get a church.”
“The glazed?”
“YES. Can I have a glazed donut when we get to church?”
“Why don’t you have part of a chocolate one now and we will see if there are any left when we get to church.”
“Chocolate?”
“Chocolate on chocolate.”
“O.K.”

Sitting in the small room, we are watching a video for adult Sunday school. A stream of faceless individuals proceeds to pull off a series of colored t-shirts. On the back of each shirt a single word, a label intended to identify the bearer. At first the words are occupations. Counselor. Cook. Artist.

“Will you identify yourself as an artist or a teacher?”
“I think it will depend on the situation.”
“It’s about how you think about yourself, what is most important to you art, or teaching?
“Art, I suppose.”
“Then you should identify yourself as an Artist first.”

Then the words become more… personal. Addict. Anorexic. I glance around the room to see if anyone is shifting uncomfortably in their chairs. Everyone is watching. Finally the last in a string of shirts is taken off. A young man in his early twenties, nondescript, muscular; takes off his shirt to reveal his smooth white skin. Between his shoulder blades is the word name.

The narrator talks about the story of Jacob wrestling an angel. He tells how Jacob has lied about his name to deceive his father and steal his brother’s birthright. He talks about his struggle with the angle who asks Jacob his name.

“Who are you?” asks the angel.

A string of white bonnets turn their faces away from the scene before them. Their eyes are tightly closed, as if the image of the wrestlers is taking place in the minds eye, outside of time and space.

Shall we gather by the river, the beautiful, the beautiful the river

“It is about identity.”
“The realization of who you are comes at the end of a struggle.”
“It is about coming to terms with your character defects, finding acceptance.”
“It is about living in the moment.”

I am none of these things. There is a reason I am me and not Jacob. Not Buddha. Not Christ. As a child I played the game of semantics. If Jesus is the son of God, and I am a child of God, then I could be like Jesus. I can walk on water (if I wanted to), I can heal the sick (if my faith were strong enough), and I can change water into wine. (head leans back, gurgling, “Mmmnn wine.”

I hear someone talking about the work it takes to be yourself, that it is about the work and not about being yourself. It reminds me of the Buddha. I hear myself speaking.

“The Buddha was enlightened at the beginning of his life, not at the end. He then made the conscious decision to stay behind and teach, to work.”

I am a little boy in a photograph. My puffy, pale blue shirt glistens in the sunlight. My whole life is ahead of me. I smile an awkward smile. I stare at the photo in my mind. I study the memory of it. Who is this child?

"Daddy Can I have some pirate booty?”
“Sure honey, I will get it for you.”

Standing, I look at the photo one more time. I wonder, am I thinking about eggs benedict?

Dream

I am driving. Surprising, actually, considering how much I drive on a daily basis that I don’t dream about driving more often. There is a familiar feel to being in my car, a kind of stillness that sits in stark contrast to the motion of the world around me. I am on the interstate. There’s road construction ahead and I slow to a stop. Cars begin to queue behind me. Slowly I inch forward till I am standing beside what looks to be a foreman.

I am no longer in my car. I look behind me; the other vehicles are still lined up in the same place. There is a white safety line, the kind you would see at a pedestrian intersection, drawn across the road. The foreman points to the construction. An entire section of the road is missing. Another man approaches and they begin talking about how long the work is going to take. He must be a geologist of sorts. He talks about the forces of weather, the wear of the wind, the elements, and the stability of the bedrock.

Glancing over his shoulder, I notice that I am sitting beside a cut through that leads to the other side of the interstate. There are other vehicles parked there, but there is room enough for mine to squeeze through. On either side of the interstate there is a small highway. I can double back, take the first exit cross over the interstate and drive along the feeder road to circumnavigate the construction.

I begin driving. I am back in my car. I look in the rear view mirror. The other cars are beginning to disperse. Some are following me; others are not patient enough to use the cut through and are driving over the median. Again others are opting to drive directly to the feeder road. I consider this for a moment, and recall the time I nearly got stuck in the mud and decide against it. There are cars coming. I dash across the highway and onto the opposite side of the road, only to realize that one of the cars is a police man in a black squad car. He passes me, but I see two more coming up in quick succession. I begin to accelerate and put on my blinker to merge into traffic. Suddenly a small black sports car shoots past at an incredible speed. The two highway patrolmen behind me take pursuit. For one brief instant I am sitting along side the officer, the radar reads 101.2.

“He was going over a hundred miles an hour” I think to myself. I am back in my car. The sports car has been pulled over. I pass them and get off on the next exit. The road rises over a small hill then drops down into a small country town. I take the first left and intend to circle around. I am a bit surprised that there is no bridge. No interstate either. I drive through the town a short distance before coming to an intersection. Glancing to my left I can see a short way down the road there is an onramp onto the interstate. I turn, but instead of taking the ramp I veer right and head towards the side highway.

I find myself wondering how I passed through the town without crossing the interstate. “A tunnel” I conclude, and while this makes no sense what so ever, I proceed with a kind of certainty that can only be found in dreams. I am on the edge of town when I see a train about to pull out along side the road. I park my car and, like Humphrey Bogart, jauntily hop on the caboose as it passes by.

The train is long and narrow. More like a children’s train that you might find at a zoo or a metropolitan park. Nonetheless I begin making my way across it, climbing steadily toward the engine. A conductor stops me and I hand him my wallet for safe keeping. As I continue to make my way forward the train becomes more crowded. A pair of young women dressed in swimwear lay in repose atop two of the carriages, one after the other, evidently tanning themselves.

I gingerly pick my way from carriage to carriage. Like the scene of a train culled from some film about nineteenth century India, the carriages become more and more crowded. Soon I find myself dropping over onto the sides of the train scaling the carriages in quick succession. Process continues to slow. Passenger cars are replaced by those carrying produce. The wooden panels are replaced by chicken wire and plastic mesh. Strawberries, peppers, and cherry tomatoes pass by. I am literally clawing my way forward.

Suddenly I have arrived. I stand up and look out over the country side. The interstate runs beside the track. I can see the construction that delayed my progress. It is slowly diminishing into the horizon. “I am going the wrong way!” The train is moving back towards the town! Somehow it has turned around. I look about frantically. I think “I need to jump off!” But the momentum of the train is too great. There are others here. A few young men, Hispanic, I think. I look at them imploringly and they return my gaze with one that is equally quizzical. We are all in the same boat. I pop a few tomatoes into my mouth. While bright red their taste is bitter, unripe.

I try to relax. “The train has to slow down as it passes back through town” I think to myself. Indeed it does, and I and two of the boys hop off with me. “I have a car” I say. We can all travel together. They nod in agreement.

As we make our way back to my car we seem to be passing through a series of tunnels, darkly lit passages that emerge periodically into terraced gardens. Progress is slow. Night seems to be approaching. As I make my way down one flight of stairs and then up another I run into yet another group of itinerant wanderers. We stop and explain our situation and they ask if they can come with. Agreeing I begin to jog forward towards my car. We are almost there. I look down and see a crumpled one dollar bill on the ground. I am afraid that one of my fellows may have seen it also and I hastily pick it up. Suddenly I remember that I had given my wallet to the conductor. “I don’t have gas money” I thought. “We will just have to make do, I guess.”

I push the dollar bill deeply into my back pocket. There is something else there: My wallet. “Where did that come from?” I flip it open, fives and tens are crammed into its folds.

“Whoa! You’re loaded” exclaims one of the boys behind me.
“I am never getting gas money from them now” I think.

My car is parked by the side of the road on a lawn of soft green grass that compliments the bright red paint of my Jeep. It looks inviting and I immediately feel a sense of relief. As I head towards the car I begin to wake up.

The predawn light is filtering in through the seems of the screen. It is early 6:30, possibly 6:45. I check the clock. It says 6:40. I swing my legs gently over onto one side and then carefull raise myself to sitting so as to assist my back with the weight.

Sitting on the edge of the bed the house is silent. Everyone is still asleep. I think about me dream for a minute. Suddenly the truth of it hits me. “Where was I going?” I shake my head and rub my eyes in a single gesture with thumb and forefinger before going to start the morning ritual of coffee.

hawking emotional loogies

Sigh. I look in the rear view mirror. G. is staring out into space. The long line of cars at the intersection has come to a complete halt as the crossing guard emphatically waves the stop sign in four directions. “STOP!”

G.’s school merged with a magnet school a few years back and went from a sleepy neighborhood elementary to a bustling metropolis sized school overnight. The infrastructure never caught up. I come to the intersection, check in four directions, make a left, and then a quick right into the circular drive in front of the building. I come to another complete halt. The cars ahead of me have opted to drop their children off directly in front of the main entrance instead of pulling forward to allow the cars behind access to the curb.

I look in the rear view mirror and the lady behind me has pulled out of line and is attempting to circumnavigate the traffic and pull to the front of the queue. I have done this many times myself, but for some reason this morning it irritates the hell out of me. I drop off G. and move forward, eventually passing her car. I glance over, fully intending to give her a dirty look, but she is busily assisting her own child out of the vehicle. I imagine what I would want to say to her if I had the chance. Nothing mean. Just “Wait.”

A memory floats to the surface of my mind. Five years ago G. was born. That same morning I loaded D. into the car and drove her to preschool. On the way home I followed a little black sports car through the school district by my house. Kids were walking along the side of the road and yellow flashing lights were reminding everyone of the 20 mph speed limit. Suddenly it pulled over. As a passed the woman rolled down her window and began to scream at me. “SLOW DOWN!”

I pulled my car over in front of hers and got out. As I approached her window I realized I had no idea what I was doing. I looked at the woman. I felt my blood boiling. She was still screaming at me when I leaned forward and spat on her.

It turns out spitting on someone costs about two hundred and fifty dollars.

The lady on the radio sings: Canto contra dictaduras emocional

Why this memory? Why now? I feel sick, embarrassed. I have no desire to relive this shameful event in my life again. I begin thinking about my blog. About how memories of people might not be about the people at all. They are about me.

“It seems kind of ego centric.” Said J.
“I know!” I said “Wait. Do you mean that in a bad way?”

Is it possible that my mind is my friend? I have lived so long feeling the emotional weight of these kinds of memories that I just assumed that my brain was trying to slowly suffocate me. “Maybe it is just trying to remind me of the consequences of an out of control emotional train of thought.” I think. Can this be right?

The radio sings gently on:

Pack up all my care and woe,
Here I go,
Singing low,
Bye bye blackbird,
Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar's sweet, so is she,
Bye bye
Blackbird!

Releasing the Scapegoat

I should be preparing for a lecture I am giving in fifteen minutes, but my mind keeps going back to Sunday. Standing in the hallway after “Sunday school,” another member came up to me.

“Do you have a minute?”
“Sure man, what’s up?”
“I wanted to ask you about your vote for Obama, do you mind?”
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Because I was interested in Obama, and I would have even voted for him myself, but I wasn’t sure about his character…”
“His character?” I asked quizzically.
“Sure. I mean, with McCain you know what he is about. He is a man of integrity, his record shows that. But what do we know about Obama? Nothing, right? He has no record. Now I think of you as an intelligent person, and I wanted to ask you what you knew about Obama that I didn’t that made you vote for him.”

I find myself going over this conversation again and again, thinking about my response, and the futility of the conversation. I will tell you I don’t think either one of us left satisfied. For myself, I think I was mystified by the word “character.” I am pretty sure I should have asked for a definition before we proceeded. Hindsight is golden.

The category, Obama, for one hundred dollars: what is character Alex?

I talked about the differences between the two candidates, the policies that they supported, the position on the economy, Reganomics…

“But what do you know about his character. I haven’t talked to an Obama supporter yet who can answer this question for me. I am unconvinced.”

Thinking about this argument makes me a little insane. I finally realized that it is because weren’t even talking the same language. I was going to talk policies, and he was going to talk, well, character. Alas, you can win the battle and lose the war as it were.

Driving home, J. asked me what I was thinking about.

School.

In fact, every time I think about this conversation I find myself lapsing into conversation with the graduate faculty. The parallels in my mind are obvious. SO obvious that it only took me three days to realize them. How I can paint my heart out, talk about my art till I am blue in the face, do everything I can to meet the requirements, and never make any headway… We are not talking in the same language.

Usually I think about the first person I asked to chair my committee, M. Sitting in my car I find myself screaming at him. Heaping the tired old conversations that keep pinging around in my head on top of him like they are his entire fault, and if he would only just open his damn eyes my metal anguish would end.

He is a scapegoat. Carrying the sins of the people placed on it and sent away into the wilderness. But I cannot kill my scapegoat. I can only watch helplessly as it prances around my imagination. In Christianity the Jesus is the scapegoat. Heaped with the sins of humanity, he rises again as an innocent, revealing that it is humanity, and not the goat that is the root of the problem.

Sigh. I know, I know. I am the problem. I feel the palm of my hand rubbing into my eye socket. I realize that I am thinking hard about this, oblivious to the world around me. This is all taking place in my head. M. is not the scapegoat here, I think I am.

I knit my brow. I have a kind of “Say my name. Say my name”
“Tyler Durden. Tyler Durden. You freak!” moment, where the warring parts of my personality collide on one another, conversations at church and school amalgamating into one another until they are almost indistinguishable from one another and then pour out onto the head of some other son of a bitch, like Samuel anointing David. Except that, like the characters in my dreams, I have been playing all of the parts in my little play.

How do I kill the scapegoat? Stop being my own whipping boy? Perhaps. But Scapegoating is the act of holding a person, group of people, or thing responsible for a multitude of problems, problems which, for the most part, I have no control over. The Goat is not the problem. He is just the dumb son-of-a-bitch who gets the blame for everything. I think today I need to let him off the hook.

Interesting Gift Ideas

Only I will remain.

Pain gives greater breadth to space. I take a long slow breath. The cool morning air fills my lungs. The world comes sharply into focus. Getting from the car to the building seems like a daunting task. I try to focus on the destination, but the journey keeps getting in the way. The parking lot is nearly empty, which makes it seem larger than it is. I breathe out. “Is the sun unusually bright?” My hand, resting on the roof of my car grasps involuntarily into the void.

“You can do this.”

I rest one toe on the curb, the heel falls on the pavement; it has the unexpected consequence of stretching the muscle. It feels good. Pleasure gives me confidence. Cautiously my legs change positions. Like a runner preparing for a marathon, I find my self warming up for the long journey ahead.

Yesterday. Sitting at the computer I head a noise and turn to find S. morosely stalking up behind me.

“Pick me up.”
“Do you want to sit on Papa’s lap?”
“Unhungh.”

She climbs into the seat and snuggles in tight. Her body feels warm. Seconds later, there is no time to react, I watch as she releases a torrent of vomit over my chest and lap. I leap to my feet and run to the bathroom. We are both covered in her sick. Quickly I rinse off in the shower and then begin to pour a bath for her. G. is singing in the other room. I need to get dressed for work. I slip quietly into the bedroom where J. and baby are asleep on the bed. A pile of clothes lay neatly stacked and folded on the floor next to the closet door. I bend over to grab a shirt. I am on automatic pilot when suddenly I feel the all too familiar pulse shoot across the middle of my back. I straighten out, but I know it is too late. I’ve pulled something.

There is no use in standing here. I cannot go backwards, only forwards. I begin the long walk across the parking lot. My own short mincing steps make me think of a geisha with wrapped feet. I imagine myself in a kimono with a painted white face. The comical image makes me smile.

In some ways I am disappointed. The pulled muscle is a return to an earlier way of life. 48 days without incident. 72 days without incident. 81 Days without incident. 0 days without incident. I try to remember what it felt like to be without pain, but the pain does not allow this. I take small sips of air as I approach the door. “I am not going to fall into fear.” This sounds familiar, I have heard this before. My mind reaches out into the ether of remembrance, pulling gently on the golden strings of the past. In my mind’s eye I can see the passage, the litany against fear:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

My hand reaches out for the door way. I remember to position myself closely to the door so that my weight, and not my back, is doing the work. The handle feels cool in my palm. I have made it. Confidently I lean back on heels and let the door swing wide. Only I will remain.

Unveiled by Popular demand

Creation

Where are good ideas born, in the heart or in the mind? Do we stumble on them by chance, or are they the product of a life’s pursuit?

S. is crying. I can hear her mewing down the hallway, or is that dream? The universe slowly comes into focus. I am lying on the couch. Mentally I do an inventory of my body, muscles and bone locked together in a delicate dance. How long have I been here? I look over at the clock. Its 6:30. I try to sort out reality with little success. Why is it so dark?

“Are you sleepy honey?”
“Un-hungh.” She replies crawling under the saddle blanket that is haphazardly strewn across my torso. Where did that come from, and why are me feet so cold? I give her a gentle kiss on the top of her head as she snuggles in close to me. There is a one in a thousand chance that she will actually fall asleep.
“Good night honey.”
Twenty minutes later we are watching cartoons on PBS.

Four hours have passed. A shadow darts across the peripheral. Was that a cockroach? I stare at my keys. There seems to be a few extras. I begin a mental countdown of the various locks to which I am given access. “Where does this go?” Unperturbed I flip through the lot again, landing solidly on my office key, the key to the back door, and finally the one to my studio.

Walking into my studio I immediately begin making a mental inventory. Piles of refuse, bits of paper and canvas, and a bag of fabric scraps litter the floor, drill and hammer, stencils, markers, and a stack of stretched square canvases unceremoniously dumped in the corners. Gingerly picking my footfalls through the debris of creation I take my place in front up the upended pile of canvas. This is going to take a while.

The rasp of the drill fills the room; discarded canvases are sorted into uneven piles all around me. I have been shuffling these cards like a Vegas dealer for what seems like an eternity, waiting for the shift boss to relieve me. I have managed to pick nine basically square canvases from a pile of over sixty and have organized them into a three by three grid and have begun to fasten them one to the next.

I painted this collection almost six months ago. It was intended as a monument to frustration, canvases, stretched and painted then stacked one on top of the next till it rose, like Ozymandias’ pedestal from floor to ceiling.

“I don’t understand why you didn’t use pizza boxes. Now that would have been something. They could have been dripping with old sauce and cheese instead of paint.” I brush the memory of this critique away like an old cobweb before my face as I prop the coupled canvases against the wall.

Stepping back my eyes move with wonder across the painted surface. Each canvas is an articulated work in its own right. I had originally painted then so that the drips would give depth and texture to the edges of each canvas one pile one on top of the next. But here, the swaths of paint, the discordant colors, the irregularity of the square suddenly seemed to leap off of the canvas.

Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news.

“Crap!” I said. I was never going to be able to over paint this. It was too beautiful. I stood for a moment in total wonder at the accidental creation I had concocted, like Frankenstein’s monster I had breathed life into useless parts. I wondered for a minute what people would say if they saw it. Would they see it through my eyes, or would it be the useless bits and pieces rescued from the cutting room floor, patched together in the vain attempt to resuscitate them? “I will never be able to explain this to the faculty.” I reluctantly thought. But I wasn’t going to paint over it either. Defiantly I turned back to the fifty or so remaining canvases, rolling up my sleeves and setting in anew.

Sharing

It’s one of those wonderful Saturday afternoons that actually feel like a Saturday. Maybe it’s because of the fall weather, the shorter days and the long rays of the sun the peak beneath the hem of the curtains and throws their long warm beams across the floor. Perfect for cats, small children, and lethargic adults to curl up on and close one sleepy eye to the realities of job and school.

The day after Halloween is always a bit of a let down. The carved pumpkins have already begun to melt in the Texas heat, their withered visages visibly disturbed by the warmth as the flesh begin to curl around the carved out triangles and squares of the jack-o-lanterns toothy grin and hollowed out orifices. All over the country, siblings sit amid piles of last nights spoils making trades to somehow improve their lot.

“I will give you two bit-o-honeys and a tootsie roll for your M&M’s.”
“No Way! You can have the hundred thousand dollar bar, but not the M&M’s”
“Please.” She whines. “I’ll throw in a licorice.”
“No.”
“Come on.”
“MOMMY!”
“Cut it out you two!” I cried. Nothing good ever comes from these exchanges. You would think by now that they would have learned. D. has a funny way of orchestrating trades without ever letting go of ownership.

“She won’t let me play with my doll.”
“It’s not your doll, you gave it to her, remember?”
“Yeah. But I want to play with it and she isn’t sharing.”
“Well. It’s hers. She’s using it. She doesn’t have to share.” I think about this for a minute. It doesn’t sound right, but I can’t put my finger on why.
“It’s not fair! I want to play with it too!”

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. - Rumi

I have an idea for a painting. It is one I have been working on for a couple of weeks now, making a mental tweak here, and adjustment there. Sitting in the hot tub in the gym I suddenly feel the timer go off inside my head. The idea is done. Time to take it out of the oven. I begin making plans to construct the armature. I realize almost immediately that all the materials I need are sitting in my studio in C. No need to reconstruct the wheel. I need to go to C. I pull out the phone and begin to call J. Pausing for a minute I weigh the decision to go now verses tomorrow. I blink my eyes slowly. The lids feel heavy; there is a kind of internal comfort to keeping them closed. “I am tired.” I think. “I’ll never make the drive.

“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing. Why.”
“I was thinking I might go to C.”
“Oh.” I can hear her thinking about this. “Why don’t I go to the gym after church and when I get home you can go.”
There issomething oddly familiar about this conversation. “Maybe a couple of the kids can come with me.”

On my way home I pick up the ingredients for dinner.

"What are you making?
"A childhood favorite, goulash"
"Oh I've had your goulash before."
"Really? I made it before."
"Yeah,but I didn't like it somuch last time. I think I was expecting it to be like one of my childhood favorites, American chop suey."
"I'll make it different this time."

The long beams of the afternoon sun creep out along the edges of the curtains, bounce along the floor and then up into my eyes. Unconsciously I close my eyes to the glare. My eyelids feel satisfyingly heavy. “I tired.” I think.

Verdant thoughts

The sun in my eyes, I flip the visor down. No effect. I tilt my head to one side and discover that, in addition to successfully positioning the rear view mirror between myself and the sun, it relieves the morning tension pent up in my neck. I slowly roll my shoulders back and forth as I listen to the radio.

Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

Verdant? Green. I can't help but feel that this is a very ostentatious word to use. The word hangs in the air. How does a company BUILD a more green world? Plant an acorn? Plant a field more likely. I think about this for a moment. Can you plant a field? A better question is, perhaps, can a corporation? I think about this again, would they? Finally I ask myself the question that has been bugging me the whole time: What is this commercial talking about? Terraforming?

I picture settlers slowly rolling across the South Dakota prairie, the tall grass springing back beneath the weight of the wagon wheel to conceal the path behind them. There is no where to go but forward. The past is behind us.

I have this idea about a novel. A weather machine is invented to deliberately modify the atmosphere, temperature or ecology is bent to the will of man to make the world a better place to live. “Committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.” I imagine it like an Arthur C. Clark novel, Childhood’s End perhaps. Where too late you realize that by manipulating the weather you are manipulating the fundamental laws of nature. People are affected at some core level. Change begins to happen.

Clark's Novel deals with the evolutionary changes to mankind, manipulated by another species, the Overlords, to transform mankind into fodder for the Overmind, a cosmic mind amalgamated from ancient galactic civilizations, freed from the limitations of ordinary matter. The Overlords are not themselves capable of joining the Overmind, but the Overmind has charged them with the duty of fostering humanity's transition to a higher plane of existence and merger with the Overmind, mankind's offspring evolved to a higher existence, requiring neither a body nor a place, so ends mankind's childhood.

Problematic. So if you manipulate the weather and discover that mankind is tied to existence, bound by the same laws that control the weather, and you break these laws, how is that manifested in humanity? Out of control birth and death rates? Overpopulation? Brain powers or brain Tumors? I find myself getting discouraged and I haven't event written the first sentence. No one is going to read this book.

I turn my attention to the road. I find myself driving a lot. It occurs to me that this is time spent alone. Is this modern alienation? How much time are we really alone? For that matter how are we ever really with someone else? When we are in the same room? When we are talking? When someone else listens? This idea of separation grows in my head.

I begin to feel lonely. I think about the girls. About S. putting on D.’s old Tigger costume. How cute she looked. I think about all of the costumes D. has ever worn. How they have changed. How she has grown. I think about the excitement that has been growing for the past few days. The allure of candy, the chance to don a costume and go out into the world, to team up with friends and family members and go out on this kind of scavenger hunt. I find myself smiling. The answer comes simply: When we play together.

I pull into the parking lot. The little medians between the rows of the parking spaces have been bulldozed clean. Velvety layers of freshly mown grass have been peeled back to reveal layers of dry earth mixed with bits of construction debris: chunks of cement, nails, twisted plastic. Hidden by the pallets of sod that had been lain down, the flotsam has been exposed for unknown purposes. Making a more verdant world no doubt.

Something has happened in Candyland, the king and his castle are no longer where they are supposed to be. “Oh cheer up!” says the ever hopeful Gramma nut, who lives in the peanut brittle house. Gramma believes that a very special little girl and boy can find the king and his castle at the end of the rainbow trail- if they look hard enough!

Compulsion

Little conversations keep bubbling up out of my subconscious, some real, some imagined. At one point I found myself revisiting my friend Oleoptene’s recent post on her “Crazy Mind reaction to [her blog] comments, getting them, or not getting them, not knowing what it means either way,” compulsively hitting the refresh button to see who had read her blog. My first thoughts were of my own coming to terms with posting, and receiving comments. But the more I thought about it, the more the meaning seemed to change for me.

My temples are pounding and I keep closing my eyes and lowering my chin to my chest waiting for the pain to pass. I walk into the kitchen, pour myself a glass of water from the fridge and drink it on one long draught. I like to drink water this way. No little sips. I like the feeling as the water floods my mouth, seeps out around the edges of the glass and dribbles ever so slightly along the sides of my cheek and down my neck. I like the feeling as I roll my head forward and lower the glass, the cool feeling left in my throat already subsiding. I sit back down and begin typing.

I begin thinking about David Sedaris’s short story “A Plague of Ticks,” from his book, Naked. In it, Sedaris describes the obsessive-compulsive behavior that drove his life during grade school. Licking light switches, counting each of "six hundred and thirty-seven steps" on the way home from school, "pausing every few feet to tongue a mailbox" and having to retrace his steps if he lost count, Sedaris was compelled to " . . . do these things because nothing was worse than the anguish of not doing them."

I begin making metal lists of the things I do compulsively. The making of metal lists is at the top of the list, along with counting miles on the odometer, and smelling the tips of my fingers. The further down the list I go, the more strange and bizarre the behaviors begin to appear. I refuse to make a list that pigeon holes my behaviors and ends up making myself out as crazy. I look back at the list. Are these behaviors compulsive? My eye falls on one item in particular: Closing cabinet doors.

Every morning I wake up with the kids and walk out into the still dark kitchen. Inevitably there is always a cabinet door or two open. Most likely because I was sleep walking a few hours before, getting a glass of water or a cheese sandwich and I forgot to close them. My eyes lock on the void between door and cabinet. It has to be filled. I quickly move to close the doors before the maddening chasm engulfs me. I am oblivious to paint chips that indicate the cabinets need to be repainted, the smudges of small fingerprints that need to be wiped along with the dribbles that streak the side of the doors from countertop to floor. The void must be filled.

With a sense of satisfaction I close the last of the doors. I can now turn my attention to more pressing matters like making coffee, another ritual that, while not requiring me to touch my elbow several times in rapid succession, nonetheless must be completed in several articulated phases if the process is to be complete at all satisfactorily.

Chip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That's what Bilbo Baggins hates, so carefully, carefully with the plates.

I stare at the counter several minutes later. There is a pool of water on the countertop beneath the coffee maker. “Where did that come from?” I imagine in my haste that I became oblivious to the water splashing from the coffeepot into the receptacle. Yet the sight of the water is so foreign I can’t bring myself to admit the obvious. The puddle is mine to own. I made that puddle. Incredulous. I reach for the sponge.

I am not compulsive. I am not compulsive. I chant over and over again compulsively. We learn nothing that hasn’t benefited us in some way along the line. Character defects surround us. We learn them in hard times. They are the behaviors that once kept us secure but have now long out lived their usefulness. Compulsion. A red badge of courage perhaps? I resist the temptation to file my friends into such tidy categories. They are my security blanket, my experiences, and, well, my insanity all rolled into one.

My temples throb. My eyes feel dry. Am I dehydrated? Time for another glass of water.

Nothing endures but change

There will be time, there will be time… a time to murder and create.

She stares at me with blank eyes. “You are failing my class." I say matter-of-factly. "You haven’t turned in any of the assignments on time, and while your test grades are improving you are still far behind.”
“I know” She says. “My boy friend is in the hospital…” I stop listening. All I can think is, what does that have to do with my class?
“Look, if you apply yourself, get A’s on the next two tests as well as the final two papers you might be able to pull a B. It is not too late, don’t give up.” I show her the math on an excel spreadsheet. You see her eyes widen, her expression incredulous as she realizes she will never make an A in my class. “You have missed too many points” I explain. Honestly I doubt she will make the B, but I am here to encourage.

A time to be born, a time to die… a time to love, a time to hate, a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.

I can feel myself projecting through time and space. One moment I am sitting comfortably in my chair, my car, my bath, the next I am sitting in graduate critique listening to the professors "discerning judgment."

“You did better this time.”
“How so?” I ask, leaning over my chair.
“Well, for one you didn’t lose your temper.” It is odd, but when he says this I can feel myself getting angry. “Everyone commented on it.”
“What should I do now?”
“I wouldn’t do anything. Keep painting. Schedule more studio visits with the professors. Figure out what is working in your art. Make a list. Think about how you want to address these in the final.”
I make a mental check list. Don’t do anything. Paint. Talk to people. Be prepared. Sounds reasonable. Why do I want to run down the hallway screaming?

Perhaps if I stopped now I could make this feeling go away. I am comfortable teaching, and happy making art. School is just a distraction, I tell myself. I think about this for a moment. When have I ever been happy being comfortable? When have I ever grown? Growth happens when the pain of doing nothing becomes greater than the pain of change. My relationship, my job, they continue to grow and change because I have been willing, time and time again, to step up and make hard choices.

I am no good at this. Is it supposed to get easier? Probably not. But it does get better. After all, I would never be content being miserable all the time. Besides that gets old fast. I fight back the nausea of depression that struggles to pop out of my head like a new Athena. I don't let it. I have no interest in settling in, getting comfortable, and staying the same. I fight with J. less, I change jobs less often. I like what I do, and more importantly I like who I am becoming. Eventually, if I work hard, while I may not get it perfect, I may get there.

The food of Love

If music be the food of love, play on. What an interesting idea, The food of love. I wonder, what food would be the food of love? Lobster? Chocolate? Asparagus.

Driving home from work I was thinking about what dish we were going to take to the evening potluck. J. and I were celebrating the anniversary of our fifteenth wedding and decided to go to a church social. It was a potluck and everyone had to bring a dish. Potlucks can be a nightmare, potlucks and buffets. I always try to bring something that I can eat, that way, if there is nothing there for me to eat, I can always find comfort in a little home cookin’. The other problem with potlucks is the dish itself. It can't be too complicated, if can't be frozen or it will thaw. It can’t be a hot dish or it will cool. It has to be baby bear perfect.

Traffic is a great time for thinking. Thinking, that is, unless you find yourself screaming at the idiot that is parked in the slow lane, and the moron who just flew past you in the fast. Suddenly it hit me. Asparagus. I called J.

“Did you happen to pick up any asparagus at the store?”
“I did!” she replied gleefully.
“Cool! I was thinking we could take the asparagus salad to the party tonight.”
“Oh my God, that is so weird. I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Wow. That is a coincidence.”
“Great minds think alike.”
“Birds of a feather.”

She didn’t have to say another word. We were both thinking the same thought. Here on the occasion of our fifteenth wedding anniversary, not having seen much of each other in weeks what with school, work and shuttling the kids around to their extra curricular activities, we had both somehow managed to stumble on the exact same idea. That, or we needed a new, thicker cookbook.

Oh, but Love grows where my Rosemary goes And nobody knows like me.

As a child we used to hunt wild asparagus in our back yard in the spring. I planted some in the flowerbed in our backyard a few years ago. Now, D. loves to hunt them, though she isn’t tromping through an acre of German olive trees, nettles, and poison oak to get them, at least she gets her hands dirty.

At the party one guest asked me the ingredients. “Asparagus, red onion, red bell pepper, cilantro”
“And the dressing?”
“Coconut milk, lime juice, sugar, soy sauce…”
"Oh, it’s got soy? I can’t eat soy. I gave it up when I got pregnant.”

Later that night I was standing in the kitchen looking for a bottle opener when the host walked into the room.

“Great salad. But I can already tell I ate asparagus when I peed.”
“What?”
“You know, The way asparagus makes your pee smell.”
I didn’t know, but I understood. “Yeah, coffee does the same thing to me, I can always tell when I have had too much.”

He looked a little taken back, but then, he had already opened the door. Apparently producing odorous urine from asparagus was a universal human characteristic, whereas coffee was not. “Well, you know…” he trailed off and made a hasty retreat to the living room. I glanced around at the remaining bowls on the table, several dished picked clean, mashed potatoes with bacon, and kabobs of various meats. I picked up a plastic spoon and reached for the bowl of asparagus salad.

Cycles

The invisible clock ticks madly in my head. An e. e. cummings poem sits on my lips. Fragments of songs, a snippet from a short story I read twenty years ago, and the occasional ode are all in a queue waiting their turn.

At work I count the windows that line the long hallway, measuring them with footsteps, two short strides, three long, repeat. The walls are all white, virginal, while through the windows and below construction workers are putting the finishing touches on the massive refurbishing project.

In the room the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.

“Have any of you ever seen this statue before?” Silence. I grit my teeth. There are some cultural icons that should not need introduction. “Anyone?” A girl in the back raises her hands.
“Why are her arms missing?”
“They were lost in antiquity.” She ponders this for a moment then asks:
“What was she holding?”
“That depends…” I hear myself speaking, but I am no longer listening. An apple, the story of Paris, then, a shield and the story of Venus and Mars, promises of love, illicit love affairs, I tick off the facts while my mind ponders the mystery of symbolism. When does an apple become only an apple once again? When do stories of heroes and goddesses, the birth of sin, or the discovery of the fundamental laws of the universe lose their luster? When the imagination can no longer encapsulated them in a single fruit? Several slides later I have moved on.

Driving home from work I am listening to the radio. “If voters in bellwether states or counties have been right in the past, maybe they'll be right again. But why should we trust them to predict anything at all?” Man is a cyclical creature.

Birth copulation and death, that’s all there is. That’s all there is.

Except it isn’t. We have been reinventing the wheel for ages. A dark age, followed by a rediscovery of the technology of the past, a renewed sense of self importance, an exploration of mankind’s greatness, followed by an exploration of our passions. Comfort, a renewed sense of self security, then disaster. Man is a cyclical creature.

“Do you want the chicken teriyaki?”
“What kind of sauce did you use?
“I mixed a little soy sauce and honey together.”
“Did you use the bottle in the fridge?”
“No.” I lied.
“O.K. But just one piece, and a glass of milk.”
I pour the milk. “How is it?” I ask.
“It’s O.K." she said, helping herself to more, "A little spicy, but o.k. “
“Great.”