The Kite Runner

A friend encouraged me to elaborate on something I had mentioned in my previous post regarding kite flying. I thought it was a good idea and so I offer the following.

For starters let me explain that the idea of going out to purchase an inexpensive kite to fly with the kids was largely due to Kahled Hosseini’s work The Kite Runner. It’s a fictional account of two boys growing up in Afghanistan and the unfolding of their lives during the Soviet Union’s invasion of their country in 1979 and the subsequent national trials they faced at the hands of the Taliban. The boys both loved flying kites and during better days in Kabul hundreds of boys participated in a traditional kite flying tournament. Here’s a link to Hosseini’s website if you want to know a bit more:

http://www.khaledhosseini.com/

My kite flying days were not spent out on open grassy parks with ample flat ground to run wild on with elaborate multicolored vinyl kites. Instead all the kids in my South Bronx neighborhood either handmade their kites or purchased cheap paper kites that came with thin pieces of wood that would snap in mid air with a strong gust of wind.

Our launching pad was on the rooftops of five storey apartment complexes. With no place to run we were at the mercy of the wind to set our flying machines loose in the sky with no fear of power lines, trees, or anything.

Like the kite flying cultural vignette described in The Kite Runner we had our own modest urbanite tradition of kite battling that was competitive and no joke to anyone participating. The gist of the games was simple: fly your kite, try to cut down your opponents, chase down fallen kites and see who was the last diamond in the sky.

What stands out in my memory the clearest is the great pains we took in preparing our kite string and tail – both of which were the only means to knocking other kites out of the sky. Let me explain.

Our preparations would begin with hunting down a long florescent bulb. Yes, a fluorescent bulb! Once we chanced upon one we would break it and grind the glass down enough to roll our kite string in it that had been prepped with Elmer’s glue. Once dried you had around 20-30 feet of kite line that was deadly to come up against and provided a wonderful way to saw down other kites in the sky as well as tear through your fingers if you weren’t careful. It was a battle royal up there n the sky! We also attached razor blades on to pieces of cloth for our kite tails to aid in the art of kite annihilation. I remember many a string burn on my hand and accidental razor cuts but God did we ever have fun when it was time to fly and have aerial fights.

Another associated memory I have is of seeing kites cut down in midair, colorful tails wiggling through the air and boys all hollering “Ahh-hoot-tah!!” and running like wildfire to snatch up a fallen kite. To this day I have no idea what that term means but we all shouted it when a kite was going down and the excitement of seeing the demise of a kite was exhilarating.

Eventually the winds would die down, the season to fly kites was over and we would turn to other things to occupy us in our concrete jungle of the South Bronx.

Up in the sky!

I don’t really know what I’ve been truly thinking about lately. This is a little hard for me to pen. Every writer goes through what is known as “writer’s block” – an open ended season of time when ideas or sometimes even the energy to dispense them on to a blank screen become as difficult as extracting a wisdom tooth with sore and bandaged fingers.

I hardly consider myself a writer and so I can hardly claim to have the professional angst associated with such a title, but I do feel unnerved of late and terribly uninspired. It may very well be that my mind is so preoccupied with personal issues that have become increasingly difficult for me to know how to process –mentally and in the crash of lives bumping into each other.

In another life I was so not like this. It’s been a tradeoff really – this American life I have now is much more filled with creativity, spontaneity, assurance of identity and a measure of joy in comparison to days of old when I hesitated before others, allowed myself to be taken advantage of and was blindly innocent in a beautiful sort of way. I don’t feel as clean as I did once but it’s all for reasons that make for a more unveiled humanity. I talk in ways I didn’t before and that’s okay too, but where most people just are who they are, I find that I have to give reasons or definitions for why I am the way I am today.

This past weekend I felt something I had not experienced in over thirty years. I held a kite in the air and with a bundle of string in my hand I ran across an open grassy field as fast as my aging legs would allow me until I felt the pull of the wind grab my diamond kite and catapult it into the air with the greatest of ease. The last time I did that was in the 1970s in New York City atop the roof of a five storey apartment building I lived in with my mother, father and two older sisters.

The experience of seeing this kite dance four hundred feet in the air, with its long red tail writing invisible letters across the sky brought my youth back to me with all its joys, fear, wonderments and loves. I handed the kite to my son … and we looked at each other momentarily. There were no words … just an unspoken exchange with his father that he will remember always.

Dear God #2

Dear God,

I’ve been thinking lately about the future and about how I’ve always been taught that you know the beginning from the end. I don’t doubt that. I don’t understand it either but then again there are a lot of things I accept that I don’t understand. But it has been bothering me, you know, this thing called sovereignty. Do the bad things we do play in to your grand scheme of things? If so, then how can I really be making any real “mistakes” now?

Oh, yeah, and like why was I born in New York and not Tibet? If I hadn’t taken that teaching job in Boston and had never met certain people, would I still be in such a mess today? Did you know I’d be feeling like this now?

In the Old Testament I note you tear people up, annihilate nations, lay waste men, woman and children in a genocidal wave of the hand just so that your Chosen people can lay claim to a piece of land on the other side of the Jordan. Why’d you stuff like that? It’s so … weird! If Puerto Ricans lived on the wrong side of the Jordan we would have been wiped out a long time ago. That ain’t right!

Don’t you think it would be a bit odd for me to kill my neighbor and then announce to my family at breakfast that I am such an all-loving and merciful father? Where’s the grace in that? People won’t tell you to your face but you know, they do talk behind your back and wonder about these things.

Jesus didn’t talk the same way you did back in the day. He doesn’t really even seem to be the same person and yet there’s this thing we call the Trinity. I think they call that “liberal” theology but I don’t know God they sound like pretty legit questions to me.

I know all this is blasphemous but if you can’t take these wonderments of mine and if they offend you then I’m really sorry. I talked to a friend of mine about them the other day and they weren’t offended. You’re much more mature than they are and so I don’t think you should take it all that seriously. Please don’t do anything bad to me for talking like this!! David spoke much harshly in the Psalms and you made him a king even when he killed an innocent man and stole his wife!!

Jump high ... walk straight

Sometimes life can be so tragically full of disappointments and anguish. It seems as if just when you have it right, that all crumbles. I may have said this somewhere on this site of mine but years ago I recall hearing some histrionic preacher carrying on about success and failure. With swinging arms and a furrowed brow he said that God wasn’t really all that interested in how high you could jump as much as He was in how straight you could walk when you land. I want to live gracefully. I’m not sure if I am still at the jumping stage or if I have started to walk. Sometimes these things are better discerned by others who see us in a different light than we see ourselves.

Waiting for Aslan to make all things wrong … right.

The Stone by DMB

The Stone
Weekend on the Rocks 2005 Concert

I've this creeping
Suspicion that things here are not as they seem
Oh reassure me
Why do I feel as if I'm in too deep?
Oh I've been praying
For some way to show them
I'm not what they see
Oh, I have done wrong
But what I did I thought needed to be done
I swear

Oh, Unholy day
If I leave now I might get away
God knows it weighs on me
As heavy as stone and as blue as I go

But I was just wondering if you'd come along
Hold up my head when my head won't hold on
And I'll do the same if the same's what you want
But if not I'll go
I will go alone a long way …

To bury the past for I don't want to pay
God, how I wish this
To turn back the clock do over again
Now I'm just wondering if you'd come along
Hold up my head when my head won't hold on
I'll do the same if the same's what you want
But if not I'll go
I will go alone

I'm a long way
From that fool's mistake
And now forever pay
No, run
I will run and I'll be ok

But I was just wondering if you'd come along
Hold up my head when my head won't hold on
I'll do the same if the same's what you want
But if not I'll go
I will go alone


I need so
To stay in your arms, to see you smile, hold you close
God knows it weighs on me
As heavy as stone and of bone chilling cold
I was just wondering if you'd come along
Just tell me you will.

Trying to Get Back

I know. It has been well over a month since I last posted. A partner with the death grip of cancer, a demanding and fulfilling job, bitter friends, and a personal life crammed with complexity has all but left me drained, disoriented, and disillusioned. But there’s always a cool breeze somewhere and lately a few of those have started blowing in. I rarely ever lack for things to comment on, whether it’s something I see outside of myself or inside, but of late I have wrestled with writer’s block unlike ever before. The closest thing I can come to a metaphor is to say that I’ve never before felt like a blank sheet of paper until recently. Still, I know life has promise and even with the most dismal of situations there has to be something of hope or we are all lost to despair. I really will do my best to get back to this blog soon. I do have a few thoughts I have been throwing around the tank. The launch of the Letters to God will most definitely be revisited soon as I have a few things to ask the Father of Lights about.

Stay tuned!

Isn't That What Friends Are For?

I've been an avid follower of the Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn. Here are some lyrics that are really stirring. I wish you could hear the music that goes with this. It's a beautiful song. Also, you'll note at the end of the lyrics that I found a blurb on the web as to why he wrote this song. Doesn't that always make a difference when you hear a song? For me it tends to breathe life into the lyrics because you can associate it with some dimension of the complex reality we live in. Anyway, this is from the album of songs entitled "Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu" it was released in 1999. Yes, that's the album's cover art up there on the left. Go out and buy it! Support this rocker who gets little attention here in the U.S. but that has been on the top of my list for a number of years.

Rei
______________________________

Heavy northern autumn sky
Mist-hung forest -- Dark spruce, bright maple --
And the great lake rolling forever to the narrow gray beach

I look west along the red road of the frail sun
Where it hovers between shelf of cloud and spiky trees,
Receding shore;

The world is full of seasons; of anguish, of laughter
And it comes to mind to write you this:

Nothing is sure
Nothing is pure
And no matter who we think we are
Everyone gets his chance to be nothing

Love's supposed to heal, but it breaks my heart to feel
The pain in your voice --
But you know, it's all going somewhere
And I would crush my heart and throw it in the street
If I could pay for your choice

Isn't that what friends are for?

We're the insect life of paradise:
Crawl across leaf or among towering blades of grass
Glimpse only sometimes the amazing breadth of heaven

You're as loved as you were
Before the strangeness swept through
Our bodies, our houses, our streets --
When we could speak without codes
And light swirled around like
Wind-blown petals,
Our feet

I've been scraping little shavings off my ration of light
And I've formed it into a ball, and each time I pack a bit more onto it
I make a bowl of my hands and I scoop it from its secret cache
Under a loose board in the floor
And I blow across it and I send it to you
Against those moments when
The darkness blows under your door

Isn't that what friends are for?

________________________________________

Known comments by Bruce Cockburn about this song, by date:

• 24 August 1999 - "The 'you' in that song is my friend Jonatha Brooke who's formally of a group called The Story... Jonatha and I had been going through similar things at a distance from each other (a couple years ago now), sort of upheavals in our respective lives and comparing notes over the phone for a while and we finally actually got a chance, after many months [to meet]. One of the wierd things about being a touring musician is that you make friends with other people who do what you do but you only see them, you know, when you sort of flash past each other waving on the bus, or you know, at the occasional festival once in a while you get lucky enough that you actually end up in the same place at the same time with time to spend. Eventually you know, this happened, with me and Jonatha. While I was waiting for her to show up at the designated rendezvous point, I ended up writing that song based on our phone conversations and a few other bits and pieces from my notebook."

- from an interview/live performance with Laura Ellen, "Live in the Sty" programme, KPIG radio station, Freedom, California, 24 August 1999.

The Confessional Booth

Growing up Roman Catholic had its distinct advantages. If you’ve never had to part a red velvet curtain, seat yourself in a small compartment, and sit quietly until you heard someone on the holy side of a confessional booth inquire about your private pursuits of the profane and then follow this up with a humble admission of guilt, well, then you’ve missed out on a great experience. Leaving a confessional booth after having been assigned some prayers by a priest is spiritually therapeutic! You go in dirty, and come out clean. It’s that simple. Catholics have one major up on Protestants in this practice. Being shrived of your sins by a whispering priest veiled behind a mysterious mesh screen is tantamount to taking a hot shower after having rolled around in a juicy mud fight for a few hours. (Oh and of course there are lurid stories circulating of inquisitive priests and confessing young ladies enough to fill volumes but no different than the sexual escapades on the opposite side of the theologically polarized fence. Need I mention the likes of Jimmy Swaggart? Enough said.) Sometimes I think we used to make up stuff simply because we had to say something and so we might as well make it good. But I do I remember standing in line at St. Athanasius Church waiting my turn to plead guilty for having ripped off some of my sister’s Bazooka gum and to confess that when I did the dishes the night before I never used any Palmolive soap but just rinsed. I didn’t want to be late for Gilligan’s Island.

Steady As We Go by DMB

I listened to this song five times this morning! Why? It captures the way things should be. That's about it today.

R


Steady As We Go
Dave Matthews Band

I'll walk halfway around the world
Just to sit down by your side
And I would do most anything, girl
To be the apple of your eye
Well troubles, they may come and go
But good times, they're the gold
And if the road gets rocky, girl
Just steady as we go

Any place you wanna go
Know I'll be next to you
If it's treasure, baby, you're looking for
I'll search the whole world through
I know troubles, they may come and go
But good times, they're the gold
So if the road gets rocky, girl
Just steady as we go

When the storm comes down you shelter me
When I don't say a word and you know exactly what i mean
In the darkest times, oh, you shine on me
You set me free and keep me steady as we go

So if your heart wrings dry, my love
I will fill your cup
And if your load gets heavy, girl
I will lift you up
Well troubles, they may come and go
But good times be the gold
So if the road gets rocky, girl
Just steady as we go

Please Feed Me!

I am into my fourth day of journaling everything I eat. Yes, you read that right! I have a small Moleskine journal of thirty or so pages wherein I am chronicling my palate’s culinary adventures–well, I’m not sure if a bowl of oatmeal in the morning can qualify to be categorized as a culinary treat, but you know what I mean.

Do I hear you asking me why I am doing this? I am doing this to stem the tide of life in the 40s! Yes, I am aging but I won’t go down without a fight. I am determined to exercise and eat right if it kills me. Hey, if I don’t then something else is sure to kill me so I might as well at least enjoy a good season of health.

I took a physical recently and I wasn’t so pleased with the outcome. So, I decided to do something radical and drastically cut back on certain dietary choices that are not so conducive to good health and force myself to be conscious of what I am actually consuming every day by writing down everything I eat.

It’s actually a very humbling thing to write down everything you eat. It reminds one of how we as Americans don’t eat to live but rather we are a nation of food consumers that live to eat. Perhaps by the end of the month I will be able to have an enjoyable backward glance and see some measure of progress.

I am also currently reading Dr. Andrew Weil’s book “Eating Well for Optimum Health: The Essential Guide to Food, Diet, and Nutrition.”

Let me bore you to death and share my food consumption on May 1, 2006. Don’t laugh!

Breakfast
• Bowl of Uncle Sam’s Cereal (whole grain, flax seeds, etc.) 2% milk, some honey
• Cup of green tea with some honey
• 16.9 oz bottle of Dasani water

Mid Morning
• One lonely tangerine!

Lunch
• Plate of leftover spaghetti with meat sauce (compliments of Macaroni Grill), threw away the meatball though! Noooo!!!!!! Someone save me!
• Boring bottle of water

Afternoon
• Went out to Publix and went on a trailmix shopping spree. Picked up a can of whole almonds, bag of raw (no salt boooring!!!) sunflower seeds, bag of lightly salted and roasted sunflower seeds and a bag of Oceanspray dried cranberries. Made myself a concoction to munch on when I’m feeling the urge feed myself filet mignon!
• Bottle of water #3

Dinner
• Bowl of brown rice with pinto beans (Yum! Really was tasty, I was hungry! How could I not be after eating all that goat food up above! Sheesh!)
• Cup of yogurt

Evening
• I was going to have a glass of wine but I opted to have a cup of green tea.

Dear God #1

Dear God,

I was taught that you know everything; the term I believe is omnipresent – but you already know that, right? Anyway, I guess I’m writing this to you more for myself than for any intellectual or rational benefit to you. From what I gather you don’t really need any of us humans that you created because you are eternally self-sufficient. It’s really odd you know because here on earth we tend to look down our noses at people that are self-sufficient and in need of no one because they have it all. Maybe you have a pure self-sufficiency and function on a different moral plane than the rest of us. Last week my neighbor, she’s so funny, told me that when you have a lot you can afford to be rude. She may be on to something, eh? She doesn’t have much, and neither do I for that matter. I hope you don’t mind if I periodically drop in on you with some correspondence along these lines. There are a lot of questions I have about you, the way you are –or at least seem to me- and observations I’ve made from what Christians say about you and from things I’ve read over the years.

Son of Adam

Church Life in the 21st Century

Dear Marie & Denise,

What did you think of the event last night? I do try you know. I’ve seen so so many of these productions over the years that, quite frankly, I’m absent for the theatrics of it all. Last night I found myself thinking of how abysmally detached the church in general has become insofar as these type of things, and their relevance to spirituality or even the historical connectivity, are concerned.

Why we are so compelled to have productions of this nature in the evangelical church is beyond me. The readings are articulated as if they are a voiceover audition for some radio commercial, the singing is often half-hearted and not up to par musically and the feeling one walks away with is one of general malaise rather than spiritual chemistry and a heightened sense of what is grand.

It seems as if the modern Christian can no longer stomach spirituality unless it is sugar coated with a thick layer of extravaganza and heel tapping. I miss the mystery of religion. I do. Of particular concern to me was the morose ethos in which we celebrated the Eucharist. Were we celebrating a death or a resurrection? The spirit was more so the former than the latter. Disconcerting is a word that comes to mind as I ponder all this.

Today’s church has all but stripped religion of awe- the wonder and secrecy being replaced with cartoons, clichés, comedy and banner waving. It’s a battle I face internally often. I apologize if this sounds cynical; it is not intended as such. Sometimes reality has a cynical flavor to it only because we have become so accustomed to denial. I think Flannery O’Connor was right when she said that that the South was Christ haunted.

Sincerely,
Pater

The Big Empty

" ... Bush has one of the emptiest faces in America. He looks to have no more depth than spit on a rock. It could be that the most incisive personal crime committed by George Bush is that he probably never said to himself, "I don't deserve to be President." You just can't trust a man who's never been embarrassed by himself. The vanity of George W. stands out with every smirk. He literally cannot control that vanity. It seeps out with every movement of his lips, every tight lipped grimace. Every grin is a study in smugsmanship."

Normal Mailer & John Buffalo Mailer
The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America

I'll Get Around To It

I’m beginning to wonder.

Maybe I’ve just slipped

There used to be a time I didn’t give a rip

If a friend was gone or just a bit tight lipped

But of late I’m craving some word

Just a hello not just a wave

Some sign that I’m not forgotten

A shadow in a long dark cave

Days are comin’ when all won’t be so swell

When you’re looking for someone to love you

But your history’s an empty shell

Alone you’ll be with your shadows and doubts

Wondering what all the damn fuss is about

But wishing you’d made that call, rung that bell

Stepped inside another’s shell

Better look out, baby, maybe give a clear shout

Black’s turnin’ to white, and your time’s running out

Strong to Deliver (A Short Story)

My father’s footsteps, always the dreaded clomping rhythm, belong only to him. He owns his weight, carries it with the strained grace of a fallen newborn giraffe. He is never too far to not be heard, and always he is close enough to remind me of the menace of his boiling anger.

Tonight he will come to me again of his own accord; he will descend like the mighty black winged stalker in my dreams, lusting after a blameless prey to confer the free rein of his wrath upon- an innocent apple to divide with his pointed arrow. Hate in the flesh.

He will plunge downward with a stench of revulsion dangling on his breath like a hazy mist hovering over a mountain, eyes lined with crimson streaks east and west broken only by two solitary marbles full of blackness.

I press my plastic rosary beads to my chest, the silver crucifix resting warm between my youth and enjoying a security that eludes me.

I pray, “Our Father who art in heaven …deliver us from evil now …”

I pause. It is at the hour of death my deliverer must come.

My prayers, are they not fervent, Lord?

Do I sin by not wanting “…thy will be done ?”

My wounded cries for deliverance, for vengeance, do they go unheeded because there is some displeasing weakness within me that I have yet mastered?

Do you save only those who are strong enough to save themselves, and in their deliverance, you, Holy Father, Strong to Deliver, are extolled on high for what is their doing?

Lover of the Innocent, Protector of Children and Champion of the Poor, deliver me!

My room is dark but for the streak of light that has strained its way through a crack in the window. In my solitude I pray yet again, but know that my angel of death will arrive at my door soon. I can hear the clock mocking me, my heart racing against its steady ticking, always ahead, always winning, preeminently victorious. Outside I hear the steady droning of cars in motion but I hear only one door slam, and the final death rattle of mistaken keys in a lock and the predictable angry crash of a burly shoulder against the front door.

“Open! … open it goddamnit … you little whore … open it or I’m gonna bust yer head!”

“Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name …”

To kvetch or not to kvetch, that is the quetschen!

Yes, I know! You don’t have to remind me. I haven’t blogged for days on end. However, here I am and I will pick up where, I think, I left off.

I’ve been on the road doing quite a bit of traveling but am back in the saddle now. It’s Monday morning and the weather is beautiful outside. People are still rambling about the weather being so bad just a few days ago, but today should serve as a distraction from the climate kvetching.

(Time out! Did you know that the term “kvetch” is a Yiddish term? Yeah, it literally means to squeeze or pinch. It also has its roots in the Middle High German quetschen … which should remind you of an English word that we usually try to give an answer to. Hey! Now go impress your friends with your great etymological prowess.)

I’ve been so terribly consumed of late. It seems like I run from person to person. I’m not going to say I’ve been “busy” because I detest that leather worn word. I have been, however, very much frenzied of late. Work has taken me away from my regular routine and while I welcome the change in the scenery and exposure to new experiences I nonetheless find myself feeling late for a meeting or anxious about another unexpected phone call or worried about falling behind.

I’m reading a book coauthored by Norman Mailer and his youthful son, John Buffalo Mailer. The title of the book is The Big Empty. I stumbled upon this publication largely through a broadcast on cable of an interview conducted of the two writers by The New York Society for Ethical Culture (http://www.nysec.org/). I was impressed enough with the clear thinking of Norman Mailer to warrant going in search of the February 2005 publication the very next day. (I have since read a short novel by NM by the title of The Gospel According to the Son- a very interesting look at the life of Jesus, written in the first person, sort of Jesus’ response to the four gospels- very thought provoking.)

I have a guitar performance on April 22nd that I feel dreadfully unprepared for. Tonight I’ll padlock myself away for a few hours and decide what course I want to go in for that. I never quite feel adequate for these events; something inside me tells me there should be someone else sitting there, another more qualified individual than myself. However all those harsh feelings usually subside and vaporize once I am seated and can see the responses from people and know there’s no turning back. Music is something that is difficult for me to write about. I’m not sure why. I’ve yet to really explore that one. Perhaps it’s because there is some mystical element to the performing and the enjoying of music. I find it hard to remember lyrics to songs, but my fingers seem to know exactly where to go when I am playing some early 19th century arrangement that I have no mnemonic hint as to how to remember other than shear mental trust and assurance.

Well, it’s Monday morning. It’s nice to be back. The weather seems to say, “It’s going to be a full week … get to work … everything’s going to be okay.”

A Bob Dylan Must Read

I finished reading Bob Dylan’s autobiography Chronicles this weekend. It was such a wonderful read. I’ve always known Dylan as a singer-songwriter, never as a prose writer. The thing that really struck me was the honesty in the unfolding of his life. He gives very little detail about his personal life in the account but always tells you what he thinks about this or that. He is suddenly married, he refers to his kids, gives a few bits of info etc., but never gives details about any of that. Very Dylanish!

The book ends after he signs a contract with Colombia Records in 1961. Still, there is a goldmine of info in this book that will really open up a new window of understanding to his music as well as his escape from the public’s eye and its quest to make him into this spokesperson for causes he really didn’t think too highly of and certainly did not want to get entrenched in the middle of.

There’s an excellent black and white film documentary from 1964 called “Don’t Look Back” that’s worth the watching when you are reading this book as it brings a lot of material together and gives you a clear cinematic take on what you are reading. Just watching Dylan totally perplex journalists with his Socratic approach to their interviewing pursuits is worth the watch all of its own. The documentary covered a concert tour to England that he took with his manager, as well as with Joan Baez (who, interestingly, never performs once with him during the tour!).

I just can’t say enough about this book. It will definitely get read again this year. As a result of reading this book I went out and purchased music by Hank Williams, Joan Baez, Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, all individuals that greatly impacted Dylan in his formative years… the book really put the hook in me for classic folk music.

I’m now reading Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”

Why Read?

The following are two of my favorite quotes on what happens when you read a book that really rattles your cage, or take in a poem that says it in a way that only your emotions can grasp. I hope you can relate to these.

"Books have swept me away, one after the other, this way and that; I made endless vows according to their lights, for I believed them." Annie Dillard

"The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book." Wallace Stevens

Yes, that's me in the pic!

The Blind

If I were blind from birth and had no understanding of the meaning of colors I would have to see with sounds, observe with my hands, pause to take in fragrances, I would be more tactile by necessity.

When I am in the presence of a blind person I always feel naked, stripped down to the core of my being, raw. I feel on edge, like I have to get away from this person or they’ll tell everyone who I really am.

They cannot see me but they know I am there.

They can hear my words but they know more of what I mean because they hear the pauses in my speech, listen for the shake in my voice. While seeming to look off into space they are looking straight at me with another part of them that is not visible to me, to those who can see but are really blind.

But I, who can see have a weight that my blind friends do not shoulder for I can see the glory of God in Monet while weeping at the images of Auschwitz and the demise of two very tall columns in New York and a nation seated and shaking uncontrollably.

In the small college I attended years ago there was one blind man. He was young. I remember this because I watched him often. He would sit during chapel services and quietly tap away on his special typewriter that made impressions on paper for his fingers to see.

I observed him so often. He didn’t know I was watching him. He was blind. When he spoke, which wasn’t often, he would move his head back and forth in that unique way that blind people often do. I wonder why they do that! It’s like they are searching for a certain rhythm in what they say.


When I was a kid growing up my parents were avid fans of Jose Feliciano, the blind Puerto Rican singer-song writer. What I remember most about him was an album cover where he was posing with his beloved dog and his other companion, a guitar. I used to think as a kid that Feliciano was an amazing guitar player for being blind. I mean it really fried my bacon that this guy could play so incredibly well and yet all he could see was darkness. I think that’s when I started contemplating thoughts about music being another form of language, a universal one. To this day whenever I hear his music, it stops me dead in my tracks. My sisters and I once took turns blindfolding each other to see what it would be like to be blind. I remember that … my arms stretched out, like the feelers on insects that crawl about touching everything about them.

The great nineteenth century classical guitar composer Francisco Tarrega was taught to play the guitar by a blind man that sat outside the rope factory of which he, as a child, was employed. Tarrega would stand and listen, amazed at this man that could not see but played sounds liked teardrops from heaven. Eventually the blind man taught him how to play and as a result we have songs like Recuerdos de la Alhambra to be thankful for.

God is gracious to give us the blind. They have taught many of us to see and having seen to understand more.

Why bother with the artist?

I was talking to a friend today about words, how we put them together, how it seems easier for some people to knit words together into something beautiful and how it’s a burden for others to struggle with the rigors of composition. Actually, this is what she said:

“My mind seems to move quicker than the words. It’s rather like a log jam. I begin to think and then my mind starts to whir and then all the words tumble into each other kind of like a 12 car pile up! I have to make a conscious effort to slow my thoughts down so the words don’t become “jibber jabber.” Does that make any sense?”

You have to love that! For a soul who is confessing a struggle with words I was impressed with the way she expressed how it feels to be crowded with words “… like a 12 car pile up!” I thought that was a superb way to put it.

Today what is on my mind is how artistic people push us to the limits and beyond. As much as we loathe the ability of artistic types to as it were jettison common sense and normalcy for their own particular brand of sometimes quirky and seemingly random self expression, the world would indeed be a dark hole without the artist.

I could fund a trip to the Bahamas if I had dollar for every criticism of William Faulkner that I have heard, from young and old. I was recently in a used bookstore, found a pile of Faulkner novels and was like a kid discovering an escalator for the first time.

While paying for my trove, the raised eyebrow girl at the register was aghast that I would purchase so many of his novels.

She confesses that she would read Faulkner “if he knew how to write a simple sentence.”

I just smiled, paid, said something like, “Oh really, right! Okay” and walked out. It was sunny outside. If gold were easily mined in a running stream, would it be worth the effort to pan for it and spend hours staring at sand, pebbles, and the like in search of that fine gold dust? Most things that are worth having are sought after precisely because of the effort involved in the securing. Ironically, the very reason readers enjoy the likes of Faulkner is because his sentences are not simple. The reader is on a constant search for understanding and somewhere in the hunt he discovered things about himself. The ancients called it lexio divinia (sacred reading).

It is the artist who pushes us to see what we would typically pass up due to our unspoken pursuit to be like others. Let’s face it, most of us hate to stand out. No where is this seen more than in those dreaded elevator rides were without saying a word we all stand there in silence for a moment and try to be so composed, so together, so not what we really are. Don’t bump anyone, don’t make eye contact, stare straight ahead, act like you are alone, freeze dry everyone around you. Funny thing, a lot of people live in an elevator 24-7.

Artistic types are always moving, never static, ever-learning, tentacles and feelers always out, reaching, stretching, touching, discovering, and feeling anew. They experience in ways that others do not. It’s what makes them seem frustrated I guess. I think too that it’s also why we often go to the artist to learn how to understand ourselves better, to grasp with the words of another what we cannot formulate easily on our own but can discern as “right” in their conclusion. Does this resonate with you, reader?

But it is the artistic soul that prods, pushes, forces us to see things in ways that we normally would never see because in our sun bleached myopia all we see is what is right before us. The artist in all his/her zany avant-garde oddity pushes us beyond the edge to enjoy a freefall once we look past the normative, the simple.

When Gold Turns to Rust

I was supposed to be playing guitar for a 50th wedding anniversary within the next month or so. Good news! Celebration! Champagne and balloons galore, list of memories, tears, Frank Sinatra music, the tinkle of ice in half full glasses of drinks, the cacophony of attendees dressed up chattering like it was their golden anniversary, long glances at “the couple” with such a history.-half a century together.

I get news that the gig is canceled. I make inquiries. It appears the couple has decided instead to get a divorce. Perhaps in the land of prosperity, where we have streets called Joy Lane and weekly incomes that outrun what most people in third world countries earn in a year, maybe here where our choices are legion and our lusts are like the worn strips on the back of our credit cards, maybe in this place in space-time this is as good as it gets.

I don’t know. That has become my mantra of late. It’s okay to not know, to avoid being so certain that you have only as an alternative the bogus confession that all is well on Elm Street and that things “couldn’t be better!” when in reality your thoughts run amuck late at night when above your bed the mirror looks down on you.

Today I will take a long walk and ponder those things in my life that are static, i.e., they’re fixed, immobile, immutable.

My First Spin Class

Maybe it was a combination of the way the instructor entered the room, all vivacious and looking far too close to a phys-ed teacher high on energy, karma, all that kind of jazz. I don’t know. What I do know is that I stood in front of this exercise bike dumbfounded. Raise the seat, lower the seat, adjust the angle ten degrees, decrease it five, stirrups too tight, loosen accordingly, handlebars … elbow to fingertip … adjust –sit on bike … ugh! Start over again.

A visitor from Fort Walton beach, in her late 50s in outstanding condition, and quite attractive for her age, watches me. I try to act confident. I really have no clue what I’m doing.

“Here … do this … these bikes are a bit different than what we use, but they’re all the same!” she says. Wonderful! A seasoned spin veteran riding alongside me no doubt 15 years my senior! Great!

I listen, standing their like an elementary age school child being instructed on how to use a pencil sharpener for the first time.

Everyone seems to be carrying water bottles. I’m unaccustomed to this as I find it irritating to have to lug a bottle of water from station to station when I’m working the machines. But I knew the question was inevitable.

“Do you have any water?” says the Florida geri-amazonian woman in sleek black polyester tight workout pants with two white stripes racing down her legs.

“Oh, uh, well, no actually … didn’t think to do that!”

“Well, here … I have this one … I’ve turned the cap but haven’t drunk out of the bottle yet … you’re welcome to have it if you like.” Nice. For a brief nanosecond I am reminded that in America there is still this kind of friendly chit-chat and that not everyone is a terrorist waiting to press a button and detonate an explosive.

I humbly accept the bottle, fumble to fit it into the water holster in front of me and then climb on my spin horse for what I surmise will be kingdom come.

Cindy, the instructor jets around the room putting her hair up and adjusting seats, admonishing this or that person, occasionally throwing out funny lines and poking fun at a few regular spinners with lines that only they understand. We wait until one guy’s bike is totally adjusted. He sat in it looking much like a father would look riding his son’s junior bicycle. I chuckled inside. Even I knew better than that! Soon I will be humbled though.

She cranks up the music, barks out a few preliminary orders, and in a moments time we are jettisoned into a world of intense rhythmic music and the sounds of legs pumping up and down. The energy is flowing and for a moment we transcend into a world in which we reign supreme. We are cool! We are hot! We are spinner! (I am exhausted!) I think for a moment, “Ha, this ain’t nothing! I can do this! I’m in shape … I work out regularly, right? Yeah!! I’m the man!!”

WRONG!!!

Five minutes into this reenactment of some medieval torture chamber gone bad I am convinced that surely cardiac arrest will come knocking on my door for an unwanted visit. My legs feel like iron sticks. My mind says, “Stop this! Right now!! Stop this insanity!”

Regrettably I am on a bike directly in front of my instructor who, after 15 minutes of maddening breakneck speed leg flying on her weapon of choice still has yet to break a sweat. Me? Well, it’s already dripping off of me and I feel very much as if I would just like to be hit over the head with a two by four and put out of my misery.

I glance around the room hoping, by God, to find someone equally struggling so I can make myself feel better, compare notes, come out the winner. You know the drill!

I try my best to keep up with everyone and, typical male that I regrettably confess that I am, attempt to maintain a straight face with an occasional painful smile. This I keep up for almost 50 grueling minutes until my rear end begins to feel like I’ve been riding a wild horse all day out in the hilly countryside. I will feel this in the morning!!

Eventually, we dismount the cyclical torture chamber and run through a series of stretches and borderline yoga-like contortions. I follow along, hoping and praying that this is not in prep for another mount on this mechanical demon.

I’m exhausted beyond measure. I am drenched in sweat. I have little strength to lift my arm for a drink from the donated water bottle, but it’s over. The class is enthusiastic with their clapping. I vaguely remember trying to bring my hands together but I think it was more of a muffled thud than a clap. I muster up the energy to respond to my Floridian neighbor’s friendly question.

“So, what’dya think? Did you enjoy that!”

“Oh, uh, yeah, it was great! Liked it a lot!” I lie.

The instructor is all bubbly and still roaring with gusto. I think I hate her! She hardly broke a sweat. Damn! Will I do this again? Perhaps. I think the next time I will pace MYSELF more carefully and it may not hurt if I bring a giant pillow to cushion my little ass some! Ha! Now, there’s a site for sore eyes!

Haiku

Two almonds brown still
Gaze the universe about
Child is born ... new hope
RR, St. Louis, Missouri


Pair for listening
Twins to inhale all there is
One cave sealed with words
RR, St. Louis, Missouri


Stillness speaks loudly
The moon shines on dark waters
Come away with me
RR, St. Louis, Missouri

Thinking Out Loud

Traveling lately. Lonely hotels. Failed Internet. Eating alone. Thinking aloud. Hot baths. Eyes glazed. Television on. Boob tube off. Bob Dylan. Thoughts ablaze. Just amazed. Honest Bob. Running fast. Lost aimless. Shady fog. On top. Sliding down. Holding on. Rock bottom. Warm Riesling. Silly thoughts. Pretty girl. Up Hill. Know me. Jesus saves. Roman slaves. Open up. Shut up. Think hard. Greasy lard. Look back. Fall hard. Feel blood. Trickle down. Drop back. Ten yards. Punt forward. They win. Who cares?. Know what? Two words. Say much. Read this. Your wish. Come again. Please do. Pay now. Pray later. Just war? Says who? Dad dead. Mom cries. Child sighs. No lie.

There is more spinning around in my head right now than I can stand. I have to say that you just can’t live with the titles people put on you. Man , it just doesn’t work! And you better get real honest with yourself … whoever you are … don’t read this and walk away thinking you’re holy cause you said some prayer this morning that aunt Martha’s pain would go away and that you’d be kept from sliding on the ice on the way to work. Is that prayer? Or is that YOU talking? Don’t hide behind moralistic clichés that don’t mean shit to people dying on the streets hungry. Yeah, find some excuse to pawn your weak thoughts on to something else that’ll take the heat off of you. Get real. Stop lying to yourself and just breathe for once in your life. Wanna feel good? Walk away and say, “Oh, he’s just angry!” God save you!

Know this. It’s harder to hold your breath than to exhale and take in some fresh air. Someone … please open a window and let the bad air out! I used to think I had all the answers but now I realize that I was answering questions no one was even asking and the questions that stump me now are the ones that no one wants to ask and few care to consider. Are you listening to this confession? Take your robe off and put on a working shirt. Roll up the sleeves in your mind and get to work.

I can hear it already. "What bitterness!! Poor soul!! Save him Jesus! He’s on a roll! Shoot a dart and change his heart. " But no … I am not sick reader. I am thinking clearly.

God, all I want is to just do it right, but I break everything I seem to touch and I don’t know how to make it right. It’s like I live in a room full of rocking chairs to walk on and each step throws me down hard, tips me over, makes me fall. Is this normal what I feel, Lord? Can you hear me now? Will it ever be better again? Will I ever look up and see the security again? Will I smell a beautiful fragrance and return to a time and place that meant so much to me but now seems faded, worn and jaded.

The greatest souls on earth are the self-centered ones! Yes. Why? Because you cannot love another until you love your self. You cannot care for another until you know how to care for your self. You cannot find a lost soul until you have found your self first.

Hey! Are you even looking?

Goats, Arabs, Coffee and Prayer

Where does the time go? It seems like yesterday that I posted last and yet tomorrow it will be one full week. Someone please make the merry-go-round slow down some! This has been a challenging week in a lot of ways. I have a smorgasbord of responsibilities on my plate at work and am really wondering if I am being spread too thin. Do I say something and risk the chance of not being asked to oversee tasks that will eventually help me to advance or do I just suck it up and pile the plate high?

Next week I am off to Denver, Colorado and the week after to St. Louis, Missouri. I’m looking forward to these business trips. They always allow me time to think, meet people, and have a change of scenery.

Did you know that goats can breathe through their ears? Imagine that! I read that in a book early this week. Let me tell you about it …

I woke up one morning this week and randomly grabbed a book that caught my eye. It was about, of all things, coffee: its history, development, global economic impact. So I read in the first chapter that we have the Arabs to thank for when we drink this black brew. Also, I read that these magical beans we grind, mix with boiling water and eventually drink, have all manner of folklore attached to them.

Check this out. The story goes that these Arabs goatherds in the Middle East kept observing some pretty wild and unusual behavior among some of the goats they were tending. I mean these animals were everywhere, running wild, jumping over stuff, wild-eyed, you know, really tripping out.

They conclude that these goats are taking their morning munch from these bushes in some hidden cove somewhere. You guessed it! Coffee trees. Yep! Those goats were horkin’ down on raw coffee beans and the caffeine intake was setting them ablaze with energy.

One thing leads to another and one of these Arabs cats tosses a bush in the fire and out from the fire comes the first whiff of the aroma that to this day is nigh orgasmic to many people.

The Arabs discovered that by drinking this bitter concoction at the crack of dawn that it made their early morning prayer traditions bearable and hence was born the morning cup of Java.

Now, isn’t that interesting?

Pacing the cage

It’s really blue out today. Always has been remarkable to me how the weather patterns transform us so. Our speech reflects this. We talk about storms in our lives or of how cold we feel inside. There’s a line in a Bruce Cockburn song that says, “Sometimes a wind comes out of nowhere and knocks you off your feet.” Couldn't have said it any better!

Today I just feel like my life is one big magnetic strip that has been worn thin. I’ll feel better tomorrow, but for now it’s a reality. I’m spent and taken in by too much and for all my apparent honesty I feel each time I disclose and try to knock I am someone else to another, soon forgotten and another swipe done. Ultimately everything is bullshit but the open hand. It shouldn’t matter so much to me. Perhaps. But I just want to be known, understood and inhaled.

You show a little, I let something show too. There's no instant-get-to-know-you about it.

I don’t know how to swim. I want someone to take the time to teach me some day. Yeah, that was really cryptic, eh? I wanted to say more, be esoteric, play with the subject, but I'm tired. It is one of the few things I am ashamed of, but there’s a story behind it and today I am weary of the memory of the overturned canoe and the north bound bubbles. The lead story in John Updike’s collection “Trust Me” resonated.

I find myself pacing the cage today. Reader. What is it that you want … really?

Why meet people? Why bother reading anything!

It has been a long time since I have visited this blog! I told a friend yesterday that years from now we will be different people based on two very simple things. First, the people we meet and allow access to our lives, who we really are in all our inner nakedness and weakness. Then too we will be different for the things we read, expose ourselves to and honestly respond to.

C.S. Lewis once said, “I read so that I know I am not alone.” I’ve never forgotten that. The things that truly impact us are those things we read and really digest and the individuals we allow into our inner sanctum. Years from now our careful reading surfaces in our lives in all manner of ways and we grow from the things learned in our valued relationships.

I am glad to be blogging again and … yes … thank you for the motivation to do this.