Books are B-O-OK with me!

I'm going at ATL for a few days to say hi to mom and winn and derka's sr. and derka's jr, so i'll leave you with something to read. a story from my college days, a story about my favorite things, BOOKS!


Safe behind his closed door in the room of his familiar surroundings, unrushed by the appointments of daytime’s constant calling, Jerry finds himself struggling to be honest. The flicker of his ritual creative candle dances a dance so sprightly he doesn’t notice himself straying from the task at hand. But what is the task at hand he wonders? “Write that down” comes to mind, so he does.
His first taste of official attempts at writing poetry have left him even more deeply certain that there’s nothing that he’s certain he knows. The expanse of word play and the unavoidable gap between what written words mean to him verse what the same words mean to any one else has left him imbedded in a place he knows he must swim out of to find perspective. Introduction to Poetry 2392 opened Jerry’s floodgate, and his determination to create himself a buoyant raft, regardless of how long or strange it might take or be. If it floats on whatever he found himself paddling through, he felt it must be true. Of course, writing in terms of the creative, metaphorical world brought back the issue of the gap again between what he saw, felt and sensed as an individual set of eyes and what anybody else saw. More than that, he had an even harder time finding people who could even see one pair of eyes, in the physical world, only validates one mindset of ideas. There was no real way to know what’s going on in other people’s heads, as far as the ghost of science had decided so far.
Academics in a place like this seem commonplace to the outside observer because people can see what they want to see in his room. Not that he had other people’s opinions in mind when he was creating his living space, but maybe he did and didn’t know it. Feng Shui couldn’t be proven wrong so he figured why not put his own spin on keeping the flow and the energies he couldn’t see yet going? Parents weekend proved that to be true when Jerry and his roommates decided to throw a black tie affair for the parents. Of course, the irony that the kids used their parent’s money to throw them a party was overlooked because in a world where the struggle for money usually did not extend further than finding a convenient time to stop by an Atm or call home, it’s the thought that counts. Which is true, the kids really wanted to have a good time with their parents and mingle worlds. The thought counts when the tools for showing love are materialistic.
The parents favored Jerry’s room because, well, it had character, and books. More books than most these parents had ever seen in a young man’s household. The father’s never dreamed of reading for readings sake going through business school. If it wasn’t huge Economics and Market Research textbooks it was Wall Street they were reading in their allotted time. And the mother’s chided Jerry’s friends for having DVD on their shelves instead of books, a better waste of money they must have meant. So when they saw this spark of curiosity in a youth it excited them. Gave them hope someone was going to take another route and live the life they can only see now, on top of their successful carriers, as something worth doing. Something they might even do themselves if they had the chance to do it over, but that’s just wishful thinking.
The unfinished wooden bookcase bought on sale at Lowe’s has turned into more of a central hunker zone for Jerry’s growing interests than a formidable bookcase. The shelves, long ago full, are now more like terraces overlooking the vertical stack he’s begun to arrange on the floor in front of his blue light special purchase. Resting on top of the waist tall piece of furniture sits a porcelain bowl rimmed with miniature tree frog figurines that houses an abundantly healthy Lucky Bamboo stalk, next to his dancing brass Shiva statue holding the sands of existence and keeping pace with the unfolding of time. Perhaps even unfolding time himself Jerry often imagined for the sake of imagining. Next to that is the pile of ash from his simple wood incense burner far too small to contain all the Nag Champa he burned, next to his favorite red candle and that’s all the room he managed to squeeze aside the books.
What made Jerry smile was for all the compliments he got just for trying to find something more substantial in life than numbers, most of the parents didn’t actually look at the books, or even the titles. Because if they did, Jerry was sure some books might be about things they had something to say about. For instance, The Road to Excess: A History of Writers on Drugs, Peyote Religions, Doors of Perception, Idiots Guide to Astrology, Introduction to Kama Sutra, not to mention how many books about different ways of looking at God he had. In Jerry’s eyes every book ever written had something to say about God but he knew most people didn’t share that view. Jerry thought that was going to incite the Christian crew more than anything, he was almost hoping for a little more educated dialectics from the parents, but nobody challenged him. Sufism? he imagined them asking with puzzled, sour looking expressions on their faces. The Holographic Universe? Hinduism? Alas, he was safe from their probes on account that none of them took time to look at the books themselves, just that there were books and the boy sounded honest. Maybe you can judge a book by its cover these days Jerry worried.
Jerry loved books because he knew knowledge is power, and the only real way humans seem to have found to try an honestly encapsulate truth is through books. The only real way people have ever been encapsulated is with books too, one in particular recently. Well, the last two thousands years or so, and Jerry wanted to know what made some books better than other books. What made some books so true in people’s eyes they were willing to go to war over them, entire countries would wage death tours in the name of a book. Who could write such a book? And how the hell did they market it so well?

On a Tuesday Jerry’s shower finally clogged to a complete halt. It had been draining slowly ever since he moved in, and four bottles of store-bought Drano hadn’t solved the problem so he was forced to call a Plummer. To his delight it was on a day when they weren’t so busy they could make it out the same day. He learned through the course of the visit that Jason, the plumber, was a twenty something Caucasian male who lived a little further rout from the center of the city. He spoke with a genuine southern drawl and came across as a standup Good ‘Ole Boy in the words of Waylon Jennings. Not really thinking about the patterned response people seemed to have upon entering his room for the first time, Jerry was puzzled for a moment when Jason, the plumber, asked him what religion he was. This wasn’t a normal meet and greet question was the first thing to go through his head, but then he quickly remembered the autographed picture of the Dali Lama hanging on his wall and launched into his ramble. He calls it a ramble because he gets this question all the time from people expecting a one or two word answer. He laughs because he’s aiming his whole life at studying and living just to find a conceptual idea to explain what religion he is to himself, or if the word religion is a good word to use at all. So when he’s put on the spot he likes to riff and see what comes up, spinning things off people and seeing how they react. He talks to learn more than to tell anybody what he thinks he knows, but you’d be surprised how willing people are to believe people who talk with a bit of passion and confidence and articulate sentences.
“Well I’m just looking for the truth, and I think religion is a good site to dig in and around, but I like to think religion is an art, that you craft. Does that make sense?”
No not really but Jason noticed the book shelf/corner and asked if Jerry had a Bible. Great he thought, another evangelist to quote dogma to him. Ever humble, Jerry said of course and looked through the bookshelf to see what he could come up with while Jason went at it with the tub. Buckets, draining pumps, other foreign metal objects with spring looking things on it Jerry had never seen all seemed to come into use getting the clog undone. Half mindedly Jerry imagined his own tool box was his bookshelf, and the clogged drain was something he still needed to find but knew was there because he’d seen glimpses of it on occasion. Coming back to the task at hand Jerry found a book titled The OTHER Bible: Alternative Ancients Scriptures with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and lots of books about Christianity, Nietzsche would even fall under that category, but the Bible? He’d have to look.
Sure enough when he saw his Bible he stepped on his own foot for not remembering Uncle Tom had given him and his brother both a copy at their father’s funeral. It was in its own box and everything, inscribed with a heartfelt inscription strongly suggesting he read the Bible before deciding what to believe. It’s not that Jerry was bitter about the Bible or Christianity or even evangelists, it’s just that his life had led him to ask questions that seemed to go deeper than the static, edited, political version of the book that existed today. Jerry had all the faith in the world Jesus really existed, and really had powers beyond metaphysical explanation, and more love than most humans can bear to even glimpse, but whether what the Bible said he said was what Jesus really said, and whether Jesus was really the only one to ever perform miracles or not, the vote was still out. Jerry just needed more to go on than a single perspective. Context is the lens of truth he knew, and wasn’t going to let his desire to know pollute his faith to believe something he know he doesn’t have enough to build a solid base on.
Confirming to Jason he did indeed have a bible and waiting for the sermon with a smile, Jerry was genuinely surprised and even excited when instead Jason started talking about how he wasn’t sure the Bible said what it was meant to say. As he plumbed away he said, “IS that the King James Version?” It wasn’t it was the Oxford edition. “Look and see if Matthew 23:13 is in there because in most Bibles, except for the King James, they tend to leave it out.”
Now this was something Jerry got excited about. It’s not every day a plumber comes and points out how a fallacy in the Bible. There was a lot to read into here. I mean, a plumber? Sure enough, turning to Matthew the Bible skipped right past whatever it said in 23:14. It went straight from 23:13 to 23:15 in the middle of a lecture condemning the Pharisee’s for being hypocritical. Ah the irony! Jerry loved this! But what did it say in 23:14? He scrambled through his roommates rooms in hoes of finding another Bible but to no avail, he would have to wait and see what it said at his friends house.
What mattered to Jerry though was not the single sentence snippet of Dogma left out for whatever self protecting reasons the church or the publisher or whoever deiced to leave it out said. What Jerry wanted to know was who had the autority to edit the Bible? How does one build up that kind of credib9ilty to have enough Holier than though in them to deicide what God’s truth was? The Nicene Council was bad enough over a thousand years ago, who was still snipping away?

On Sunday Jerry and his roommates entertained and he found himself talking with a girl he’d met before only in passing and seen her face around campus, but never really introduced or conversed with. Melanie. Taking a sample shelf Melanie followed along left to right reading the vertical titles: Hafiz’s The Gift, The Complete Idiots Guide to Teaching the Bible, Awakening the Kundalini, Leaves of Grass, The Discovery Channel’s Evolution Series in book form, The Brother’s Karamazov. She wondered how anybody could wind up so confused. A somewhat more traditional girl she was raised in the suburbs of middle America with a set of Sitcom parents, father working, mother the house manager, church on the holidays and only until she was old enough to realize they couldn’t make her go on those days either. Somewhere inside her she wondered if she stopped going more out of rebellion than the calling of her own heart, but those thoughts never come to surface until she hears a story about something bad happening to a friend. One would think all the terrors on the news would be enough to bring up those sorts of doubts, but like her dreams she’s become desensitized to such stirrers.
Turning towards the sound of beads falling back into place she is met by Jerry with a cup of tea in a small, olive green crackle cup. “They say tea does wonders for the body. Oxidizes and cleanses, but I drink it for the ritual. Helps me to see the whole world in my hands. Not to mention my Starbucks scholarship is running on empty and the coffee buzz has lost it’s edge these days.” He says with his signature smile.
It’s her first time over here. Well, first time sober anyways. There were pre-parties and post-parties over here earlier in the year, but everyone drinks before, after and during those. The result of course being a reduction in the conversations people tend to have to chit chat, time filler everyone projects to be who they think the person they’re talking to wants them to be. Come to think of it she talks like that during most of the day to, especially when she runs into “Sisters” between classes. But now things are a bit more personal between them, he officially invited her for their ritual Sexy Sunday celebration. The image of her real first night here when the police managed to stay away until everyone left sometime around four in the morning, when she found herself smoking a cigarette out back with her best friend Sharon and she was watching him laugh his ass of at something she couldn’t figure out. Jerry, who for some reason had been walking around with a microphone from Star Search all night was interviewing a girl she knew but who wasn’t her “sister.” He was asking whether or not she dreamt in color Melanie remembers. Casually eavesdropping as people learn to do here she remembers asking herself, who talks about the metaphysics of dreaming when their ten shots of Patron deep and two hours from sunrise? Her own mental haze never allowed the questions, any of them, to take much flight though before she felt the heat of her cigarette getting dangerously close to her index finger. How on earth did she remember that moment? And why now?
Sipping her Green Tea as Jerry flipped through the pile of burned CD’s stacked atop his stereo, Melanie takes the comfortable moment of silence to look around his room. Purple orchids in an empty Greygoose bottle, 4 by 6 pictures of mostly picture laughing hysterically tacked to the wooden walls in every direction she looked, a strange looking round piece of wood with what appears to be half a tennis ball underneath it on the floor next to his queen bed with its inviting gentle blue comforter, a lit candle in all four corners of the room, a funny looking bean pillow bellow a beige tapestry with some sort of eastern Buddha image on it she’s seen somewhere before but never understood. A pair of bongos lay next to the balance board and an auspicious looking hookah she took as explanation for the framed Phish poster on the wall which looked more like museum art than something one would buy in the parking lot after a show. It seemed every direction she found herself gazing in had something to look into, be it a picture worth taking a closer examination of from some late night turned silly, or his wall hanging titled “The Three Realms of Existence” with its itty bitty print describing each layer for the interested ones with real curiosity. Finishing her tea Melanie sits down under the brightly colored Tibetan Prayer flags on a light gray leather seat and can’t help but ask, “are you Buddhist?”
Finding the CD he was looking for just as she spoke Jerry turned with a smile, “Well I’m very curious, and I think the divine mystery is far to big to fit into any one religion. So am I Buddhist? In a practical sense maybe, but I don’t think I’d ever make a claim like that until I’ve studied everything about everything, which thank God will be never given how many stars I see on clear nights.”
Not sure if that was an answer Melanie is glad when Jerry notices her empty cup.
“More tea?”
“Sure why not.” she says with an unprepared, genuine smile.
For one reason or another Melanie bumped into Jerry and his roommates that Sunday afternoon at the mall shopping for a formal dress. Jerry and his two goofball roommates didn’t have any explanation for being in the mall other than “It’s sexy Sunday,” which is also how they explained being dressed in suits at two o’clock in the afternoon with a bag from the Discovery Store. Constellation projectors were on sale they said with an extreme joy Melanie hadn’t tapped into yet.

Just then, a fluttering of wings alerts Melanie to turn around just in time to see the famous mocking bird flying right for her! J.Crew-Bose Store-Orange Julius- almost there- and with a whoosh the winged messenger pulled up and flew by over head, dropping a package to Melanie as it did. Excited, Melanie open the box to find a box with in another box, inside another box and then there was one more box inside that one but that box had a red ribbon tied in a bow on it. Opening that final box Melanie found an envelope, and inside that a letter that seemed to shimmer as she unfolded it. She had heard of such messenger birds as these. They delivered telepathic messages in physical format, like a psychic antenna to video converter thing one might buy at the Radio shack over there next to J. Crew in a few years when the technology catches up. To our mental capacity. But what was the message? And was the message for her, or for the observers just off the page, sitting around a big wooden oval table with an old fashioned green chalk board they never really use, but always enjoy the prior class’ comments. It might even be a nice sunny day after a nice weekend home with the family, stuffing yourself because you give thanks and if the school is going to give you a day off then you’re sure as hell going to take advantage of it. Maybe the message on the shimmering piece of paper the Famous Mockingbird dropped off is for those people looking out the two big windows with square glass panels to observe the big grassy courtyard just outside the Hall you’re in. Maybe you can even see people hanging out outside talking on their cell phones and smoking cigarettes…
Melanie, fed up with playing around in her own mind for so long, finally read the message and it said… “I just want to apologize for not making it to class today, but I really had some signs tell me There’s this adventure I needed to prepare for and take and it’s only happening, ever in the history of time, today, December second. I want to thank everyone for a great class all semester. This definitely goes down in my best class ever book. WE should get together sometime and sit around and read stories, I’ll host no problem. I live right over on Fondren we can rock all night long. Maybe we can get Mr. Haynes to come as an official established author and then write an article about it for the newspaper and get a name for our club and voila, we’ve got a club started. Anyways, email me and we’ll figure it out. Also I would really love feedback on this story, it’s a bit of the top of my head but if you have thoughts, email is key. All is much appreciated. colesuttle@hotmail.com.”
With that the shiny piece of paper slipped out of Melanie’s hand and turned into a puddle on contact with the linoleum floor. The Mall was quite now except for the distant hoot of the Famous Mocking bird, delivering those special messages for people with open hearts.

So far this story could go in a multitude of ways. What I’m trying to do is illustrate different views of books, which is a metaphor for angles of truth. Is truth relative? Objective? It’s about the power of books and persuasion, gullibility, unintended wisdom. What do you see it driving at? Where can scenes be put in? I was more focused on building characters than the scenes in this round. I know it’s a bit ambitious, but ambition leads to leaks which turn into floodgates if you poke them enough.

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Well if you're ever going to start, you're going to have to start from here, no matter what. You always strat from here because you can never be there, you can only be here.

Go to this page to see:

http://shelbycountyreporter.com/articles/2006/08/30/opinion/opin05.txt

"Begin at once to live." - Seneca

Grandma Talk

Grandma’s been talking about her Mama a lot and remembering how things used to be way back when. A lady she knew since when she lived in Bessemer all those years back called out of the blue today just to say hello. That really got her going. I think she’s getting ready for her trip to California and how different it will be. She sees how different just this part of the world is since when she was a kid, since when race and financial divisions were simply a given. When the rich white people all lived together in their own part of the town and such. Not that every things changed, it just isn’t as socially sanctified anymore.
“mama used to be sewin’ all the time, and I mean all the time. Whenever there was something, like Easter, or Christmas, or whatever when we’d have to have a dress, we’d always tell mama what color we wanted and everything. Shor’nuf when it came time for it we always had new dresses.”
“I mean she was sewin’ all the time. So much it could have been her job, but you know what, we had nicer clothes than most the richer folk did ‘cause mama made ‘em. She would so all day and just about an hour before Daddy’d come home she’d put all her sewing stuff away and put on a starched apron. I don’t know why, if Daddy’s gripe about her sewing or something, but she always put it up.”
We always have a few strips of bacon in the morning and she was remembering how when she was growing up during the depression bacon was a treat. They got one slice a piece if they were lucky!
“Mama always liked to do things for people. She was always helpin’ people.” Now I see where it comes from, plain good people.

Tonight we were eating dinner and Grandma started laughing, “Isn’t it funny the things that make you think of people?” she says and picks up a green bean. Like this bean remind me of Henry. Did you ever know Henry? No I guess not. Henry was Pop’s sister Rebecca’s husband and I sure like Henry fine. He was someone worth knowin’ I’ll give him that.” She was sort of carried away remembering and laughing and talking about Henry and forgot about the bean she was holding. Then she remembered and went on.
“See Henry was strictly, I mean strictly a country boy. We were at Yale I guess and Rebecca and Henry were visiting, probably for some special occasion or something, and I remember at dinner they had beans like this,” holding up a green bean that hasn’t really been cooked, just sort of seared and seasoned, still crunchy like they do. “Henry leans over and says, ‘Mary, I don’t even think the water even got hot!’ He just couldn’t believe they were gonna serve a bean that ain’t been cooked like that!” She had a great laugh and I have to say, I do wish I’d met Henry.

Grandma come sup to me and says “Cole I’m gonna tell you this cuz’ I’ve been thinking about it every time I think about you recently. Do you know the song that goes ‘I get a lonesome feeling when I hear the church bells chime cause wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine…’”
Aw Grandma, its not so bad. Think of all the parties we’ve got to get excited about?

been going to sleep forever

You wanna know what’s eternal? Going to sleep. Going to sleep and then waking up having started over. Every day, since forever, the earth has been spinning, and the sun always goes down and then it always comes up. I mean always, and I know its not good writing style to use strong universal expressions like “always”, but I mean it, the sun always comes up. Think about it. What else do you know that has always done the same thing since close to forever ago? The moon? I’ll give you that one, but it’s incredibly hard to wrap your mind around. It’s so big. As humans we can only go so big, can only handle so much. We only have so much space to occupy and something’s are just so big its outside our realm of understanding. I’m not complaining about this, I sure as hell still try to wrap my mind around some super big ideas, I’m just saying I’m humble enough to know that even the most I can know, the biggest amount of true knowing, which is a lot more than I do right now, still isn’t as big as it needs to be to understand the whole of existence. My point is that that’s ok, its still worth trying to move up or forward from wherever you are this go ‘round.

My insanity as evidenced by the way I cut an apple.

There’s no use worrying about space
Its only really here when you don’t worry about it
When you are it
You are it.
Sometimes there’s too many voices
Its all chatty Cathy up there, ya know?
Then I learned how to simmer and now time is on my side.
When I’m humming I can’t feel a thing
I hear everything
Its what makes it so clear.

+

Humans are incapable of experiencing any original moments.
Or are they?
What is waking conscious?
Perhaps it is when we are reliving what has already been dreamed by the self.
Are we having original thoughts when we’re sleeping?
Do you plan your dreams?
How’s that work out for you…

+

(the turtle i almost ran over, red leaves, red leaves and the purple tree)

the funnies

I brought in the paper to Grandma and we sat down to eat a sandwich. It’s Sunday so the paper’s huge.
“Here’s the paper, Grandma.”
“Jiminy gee that’s big,” she says.
I pull out the funnies and read a few while we eat. Grandma starts to talk, “That’s the one thing I always look forward to is the funnies. Ol’ Denise the Menace, he’s my favorite, and I get Family Circus, and I get Blondie, and I even get Pickles sometimes too, old couple gripin’ ‘bout things.”
I was smiling so big and trying not to laugh out right. God grandma is cool, and she’s so pure. I’m so fortunate to have this time to spend with her and learn what I can while I share what I can. It really has been something else. She is still by far the best roommate I’ve ever had.

“How were the funnies?”
“Gooood,” she says with a nod and a smile.
“Which is the one you like to read?” she asks.
“Foxtrot, it’s this one,” I say and point to it for her as she open the funnies back up.
Then sort of talking out loud to herself she says, “Yes, I need to expand my…” and then trails off into reading the strip.

Zen Tractors

I got an impromptu lesson on tractors today. Dave’s been getting the new muffler ready for the old blue tractor, and he got it, but I guess it cut out on him when he was out by the road on it. Anyway, he had his daddy come over and borrow one of the Perkins boy’s big old tractors to tow the old blue one back to the barn.
I was coming up the driveway just as Dave was parking the big old red tractor facing the field by the barn. He jumped off, turned around, and walked back into the barn and didn’t notice that the tractor was still in gear and had started rolling and then running straight into the field.
“Dave! Hey Dave!” I yelled as I jumped out of the E-Z-Go and started sprinting after the driverless tractor careening through the field. It was a big old tractor that’s for sure.
Dave turned around and saw and started chasing it too. I started to laugh imaging what we must look like from a bird’s eye view- a big old red tractor running through the middle of the field with two silly white guys converging on it in a dead sprint. Dave’s cowboy boots never moved so fast, I’ve got to give it to him. He jumped up on in from the back, grabbed the reigns and got her stopped. I was laughing and out of breath, but still kept on laughing. It was great.
“That was great, like saddleing a horse from the back at a full sprint,” I teased him.
“Sure glad you hollor’d or the only thing stoppin’ that’ad be the woods.” Dave went to take the red tractor back and I went and talked with his daddy who was in the barn by the blue truck, laughing at us.

“How’s it goin’?”
“Jus’ fine,” and I sensed myself being perceived as the city slicker I appear to be by this old hardcore farming man.
We small talked for a bit, I introduced myself, “I’m Cole, Allan’s youngest,” and he mentioned about how he knew Pop real well, about what a fine character he was and everything. He said to tell Grandma hello and whatnot, and then he told me a story about how he had asked Pop one time if he could go up on the mountain and pick up some good sized rocks for his garden at home. Pop had said anytime he wanted he was welcome to, but he hadn’t quite had the chance to get a load of rocks yet. Well of course I got excited and asked him if he’d been to Labyrinth. He said he hadn’t but Dave had mentioned it, so I told him he should let Dave take him up there sometime because I can assure him that I, like himself, know how good this mountain is for finding good sized rocks.
“Oh yeah I’ve been rock hunting through here many a time. Good rock hunting up there, no doubt about it. “ I said.
I returned his story with a story about how when we were building the Labyrinth we’d go out and pick up rocks everyday. Well Pop didn’t really understand what we were building because he couldn’t make it out there on his own after his stroke. Sitting on his throne by the big picture window his imagination would try to piece it together, “I spent 50 years movin’ rocks outta these fields and now ya’ll are movin’ ‘em back in!” Good-naturedly of course. Don’t worry, Pop got to see the finished product and he approved and it put his mind to rest.
Dave’s daddy picked up on this instantly though and said, “That’s right, you young kids go ‘round screwing up everything we old folks worked so hard for,” still good naturedly of course.
“No no, we’re just excited about life, it’s that naïve innocence of the youth, right? You gotta screw something up to learn how to do it right, right?” I said defending all the stupid things young people have ever done with a big grin on my face.
Dave’s daddy actually put a foot up on the bushog and leaned back in his Liberty overalls and nodded his head, “Well ya gotta good point there, I’ll give that,” he said, nodding his head. And with that, the ice was broken, I was in.
“Yeah I hear Dave’s got ya’ll all conned, says ya’ll all think he’s top notch,” he was bullshitting with me. “Ya’ll don’t know the Dave I know’s I guess.”
‘Hey, we’re just looking for team players is all. Dave’s a good team player,” I bullshitted back with the old man.
I asked what he thought the trouble was with the old blue tractor with its brand new muffler. He started talking and walked around to the front of the tractor and then I realized he was expecting me to follow him because class was in session. I got the message and walked around next to him while he gave me a serious answer to my question.
Standing near the front end of the tractor in about 10 minutes he explained, “I figure since its probably been so long since the engine got cranked, rust particles an’ dirt and such probably sucked all that dredge into the filter and clogged it up,” pointing to the filter, “ and so there’s no fuel getting’ to the engine cause it can’t get through. If that’s the case, and I suspect it is, you gotta change to the filter here and then see if it works. If that’s not it then it might be your getting’ air in your line. To check that out you gotta unscrew these four lines,” tapping on the lines, “then tighten ‘em back on there once you see fuel comin’ out instead’a air. Now you should see bubbles, bubbles are ok but if there’s just air comin’ through you ain’t gettin’ enough fuel. Now she can run on two probably lines if she had to,” followed by slow, choppy, chunky engine fire sounds,” but what you really want is all four.”
Dave was back from returning the big old red tractor by this point and had a can of something he said he wanted to try. It was in an aerosol spray and he sprayed it on the engine exhaust, and tried to start it up again. From a distance even I could see that whatever he sprayed was full of fumes. When it hit the heat of the muffler the fumes mushroomed and it was almost overwhelming just standing in the barn.
“What’s that?” I asked as I turned around to get a breath of fresh air.
“Ether,” Dave’s daddy tells me with a smile on his face. “Ether’ll get just about anything to turn over if it’s gonna.”
“So it’s like an adrenal shot for the tractor?”
“That’s ‘bout right, adrenaline shot for the tractor. You spray some of that on the exhaust and get ready.” He chuckled, either at the adrenaline shot metaphor or the way the fumes sent me running.
I was in.

Well the ether didn’t work but the invisible fumes were so strong I see why it might have. We got back to the lay of the tractor and he gave me some more lessons. In my head all I could think about was how this moment I was in the middle of having corresponded almost exactly to Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I was about to launch into my, “Have you ever read a book called Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance?” conversation like I usually do when this happens, but I curbed it and realized that might not be the best road, the best context for getting on the same wavelength as Dave’s daddy. Keep it simple, but try and make it sweet I thought.
“So all tractors are basically the same, but kinda different?” I asked.
“Yeah that’s ‘bout right. They all have the same functions, they all do the same things, they just each do it a little differently.”
“I see, that’s why each one is kind of unique. I can see how someone could really get into tractors,” I thought out loud as I remembered all the sweet tractors I’d seen on display during the Liberty Day Parade.
We kept talking while Dave started to do just what his daddy had told me he would have done in the five minutes before when Dave was down at the bridge taking the tractor back. I was laughing on the inside about how they didn’t say anything to each other about it, Dave just took the same steps to diagnose the problem. There were some strong father/son vibes coming through here. It was clear Dave had probably learned how to do this watching his daddy do it growing up, by no wits just second nature. This was universal tractor knowledge being shown to me I could tell, I was honored.
I still couldn’t stop thinking, “God this is just like Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” but I wasn’t about to bring it up. It’s funny because I love that book so much even though I see that I’m sometimes more like the antithesis character to the narrator. There’s the narrator who rides an old motorcycle that he maintains and runs and understands the process of completely by himself. It isn’t a fancy bike, but it’s a good one, a fine machine, and its just simple enough that when something’s wrong there’s a way to check all the connections and see where there’s a break in the overall functioning of the thing. There is an art to maintaining it and he has the knowledge and the right attitude to do so.
The other character is his best friend and his wife who go on road trips with him and his son. They ride a brand new, top of line BMW motorcycle. They buy the highest “quality” they think they can, but they don’t understand how the machine itself works. When something breaks they have to take it to a mechanic to fix it. When the handle bar starts to shift the narrator offers to fix the problem with a little piece of shim, or in other words a strip of aluminum from a beer can. The guy who drives the BMW bike doesn’t think using a beer can to fix his high priced, finely tuned machine is such a good idea. Maybe for an old beat up bike like the narrator’s, but not his BMW, no way.
That was a digression but I chuckle because here I am, the city slicker with a BMW in the driveway, talking to this good old boy, and he’s an old good old boy because his son Dave sure is a good old boy himself. I was thinking how much better Dave’s daddy looked in his Liberty overalls than I did in mine, but I didn’t tell him that.
Even though I’m the city clicker with the BMW in the driveway, and I will be the first to point out my shortcomings when it comes to that too, honest, I still respect the beauty of the functional systems of an engine, say a tractor engine for example.
“It all makes total sense once you have it explained to you, that’s pretty neat,” I commented out loud. When there was a pause in the lesson.
“Yup yup.”
This is where the narrator in Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance explains about the romantic versus the classic understanding or view of the motorcycle. On one hand there’s the romantic view, the idea of the cycle, the wind in your hair, taking turns, smooth and fluid actual experience of riding on a fully functioning motorcycle.
On the other hand is the classical view of the cycle, the schematics, the systems of systems that all come together in a hierarchy of sorts to each play their part in the overall functioning of the cycle. This is the sum of all parts perspective if you will, and there is a particular type of beauty to a well crafted machine there. An appreciation for the design. Even though each part of the bike- fuel line, filter, engine, steering wheel, whatever- are all doing something different, they have to all be doing what they are supposed to do properly in order for the overall, romantic view of the bike to be a reality. The romantic and the classic view are interdependent on each other. They both exist and both have to exist in any machine.
That’s why if the engine doesn’t start, there is a process, an art perhaps if you have the right attitude about it, to going back through the chain of things that needs to happen in order for the engine to start and see where there’s a dysfunctional link. How each individual goes about doing so is the art of diagnosing the problem. Whereas the narrator understands this and has the knowledge and the experience to do this himself, the other rider doesn’t have the knowledge to do so, he’s also a little caught up in the glam of the BMW logo and thinks he has to take it to a specialist. He also doesn’t have the right attitude to go about solving the problem himself because he gets caught up in gumption traps along the way. He would rather just pay someone who can do it right to it, but who exactly are these specialists? They’re mechanics that get paid to fix the same functioning systems that have to happen on any cycle, BMW or not, but they do it in the dealership’s garage, and that affords certain people peace of mind.
Well think about how well you take care of something when its your own, verses how well you’re likely to care of something if its not your own? Think about how you treat a rental car. Are you sure there isn’t more quality in doing it yourself? Maybe you do it ten times before you get it right, but the next time that same thing happens, you’ll already know what to do, maybe, but that’s more about gumption. You’ll have already put in your time learning from experience and will be able to make a higher quality diagnoses. That is what quality is, it’s the time you put into learning how your machine works.
I, by a chain of curious events, happen to look like the BMW guy, but I’m humble and shy about it, I know it’s my weakness. I never had the chance to learn from watching people fix tractors when I was growing up because I didn’t grow up on a farm having to fix tractors. I don’t know if Dave’s daddy sensed this or if it was a motion from one of those hidden determinants of human behavior we’ve been talking about, but when he wanted to teach me a thing or two I was happy to listen and he seemed pleased to inform me. I really did learn a lot in just a few minutes.
Dave checked the line up to the filter and there was definitely fuel getting to there, so he screwed that back. Then he went to the end of the fuel line on the other side of the filter, unscrewed it and left it open and tried to start it.
He walked around to the other side of the tractor to start it, “Ain’t nothin’ comin’ outta there is it?”
“Nope, sure ain’t.”
“Yup, it’sa filter,” and just like that he had it figured out.

The beauty of the classical view of the machine is that there is a universal idea about what has to happen to get the overall idea to exist. All the little ideas within the big Idea are not arbitrary or less important in anyway either, they all have to be good, beautiful ideas for the machine to work. The ideal, though invisible, is real nonetheless, and you can test against to see where the problem is. This is a good place to give the caution of the theory of relativity as proposed by Marx. Everything is relative but everything is not arbitrary, everything is relative to the beauty and truth of the Absolute, not to itself. Though invisible, the idea of a quality machine is real nonetheless. You can measure how close you are to it in your model of that perfect machine with things like how smoothly the engine is running. (Go read up on kinesiology with this in mind.)
In a way this is sort of like the body and optimum health. The body is always healing and regenerating itself at different intensities from the time of birth to the time of death, in relation to some sort of “whole” that it keeps trying to get back to. The universal “wholeness” of a healthy body and the way the body always tries to get back to in terms of healing and reorganizing itself can be scene as easily as you scratch yourself. You fall down and scrape your knee, what does your body do? It automatically scabs over and starts to regrow skin and heal itself, there’s nothing you can do about it. Though its rare for optimum health to be a living reality for people in a world that beats you down so often, it is important to keep your vision of the ideal wholeness of yourself in mind as a means of having a window to the absolute to keep track of yourself with. It is possible and worth trying to get close or as close as you can to that ideal vision of yourself. It needs fuel, or food and water and exercise, in order to function properly. On an emotional and psychological and spiritual level, it also needs fuel. Where the infinite potential of the human steps away from the machine metaphor is when you start to talk about what different sorts of fuels there are for body, mind, and spirit.
When the body is running smoothly you hardly even notice it, but when something gets hurt or diseased and the underlying form, the systems of connections and relationships of different functionary wholes, like organs, aren’t all functioning, then the whole isn’t working just right either and you begin to see symptoms. Cancer, for instance, is a cell within the body its self that just sort of goes haywire and grows out of control. A cancer cell is like a cell that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. If there’s a schizophrenic liver cell that thinks it’s a big toe cell instead, then what have you got? Well, you’ve got a big toe in your liver and that’s not good.
I don’t know what makes some cells go crazy and not others. It seems like such an in-house thing, but it must have some sort of outside cause you would think. Power lines, cigarettes, McDonalds, who knows? You know the symptom before you know the cause it seems like, but if you don’t trace back in the line of things and figure out what the root cause is, then your problem isn’t going to go away. Sure she can run on two lines, slow and chunky and choppy like, but what you really want is four. You don’t want to be just getting by on two, do you? If you ignore a problem or half-ass fix it and patch it up with a Band-Aid, that’s just poor quality and its going to effect your romantic experience down the line, sooner rather than later. If you repress things, psychologically or physically, they mutate behind the scenes and come back as bigger problems, and then it’s even harder to trace back to the root cause because of the mutation.
Optimum health, like a smooth running tractor engine, is a universal given you can test yourself against. Wholeness. If you were a whole, how whole do you think you are right now? Do you think you could be “wholer” if you tried? How would you try if you wanted to? I guess you’d have to notice your self, first, wouldn’t you? Notice how much of your self you can notice. How aware are you? How conscious of your whole self are you?
This makes perfectly rational sense, doesn’t it? This may sound “far-out” but really its rational, right? You saw all the idea systems there right? It makes sense that the sooner you work back to optimum health, the more healthier you are going to have the potential to be because the more root causes you are going to be able to find. Does this sound true? Did I really just learn all this from my tractor lesson today, or is that just the context that helped bring the universal knowledge and understanding I already contained within me to the surface? What are the human determinants of human behavior? That’s a fun one to think about.

Dave took the filter off and sure enough it was clogged solid. “Hope they still make ‘em for this ol’ tractor model. Don’t make no sense go up there on a Sunday afternoon, I’ll get it t’mmorow.”
“You didn’t know what you were getting’ yourself into offerin’ to fix this tractor did you?” I joked with Dave.
“Aw it’s always somethin’, jus' life on the farm s’all.”
He’s right, its just life on the farm, that’s all.

They Love Each Other
by the Grateful Dead

Merry run around
sailing up and down
just looking for a shove
in some direction--
got it from the top
it's nothing you can stop
Lord, you know they
made a fine connection
They love each other
Lord, you can see it's true

He could pass his time
'round some other line
But you know he
chose this place beside her
Don't get in the way
there's nothing you can say,
Nothing thay you need
to add or do
They love each other
Lord, you can see it's true

It's nothing they explain
it's like a diesel train--
you better not be there
when it rolls over
And when that train rolls in
you don't know where it's been
You gotta try and see
a little further

Oooooh they love each other.

ages

I was reading the other day with the fan on my face, because its still hot down here, and from somewhere in the bookshelves above my head a single piece of paper blew out and landed on the ground. I noticed it, picked it up, and read it over. It was something my first religious studies teacher had written and handed out to his class when I was a freshman. Dr. Kliever, I see now, was personally responsible for me becoming a religious studies major on account of the power of my experience in the first religions course I ever took, “Ways of Being Religious” taught by Dr. Kliever. Dr. Kliever was, and I say this with utmost love in my heart, a crippled midget, a shining old man, and by far one of the smartest and most amazing individuals I have ever come across in my life, no less study under. I remember he would limp in with his cane, sit up on his stool, and just talk, and when he talked his speech was so strong and on point it sounded like he was reading from some incredible book, but he was just talking. It was he who encouraged me to relate to religion and spirituality and the experience of the divine in my own way. He gave me the go ahead to write with my own heart.
I took a second class from him second semester my freshman year, and then I found other teachers to guide me from there on out. When I was driving across the country somewhere between my junior and senior year I had a dream about him. He was in a meeting with my parents nonetheless and told them I had a glow or something. It was a dream mind you, and maybe one day I’ll type it up for you, but it would be missing the point here and now. It was a powerful dream and though I don’t often keep dream journals on account of how inconsistent my ability to remember my dreams in the morning is, I wrote it down. It was one of those deams that strike you and stick with you.
When I got back to school and started going through my school email account there was a death notification in my mailbox from sometime during the summer. Whenever an SMU faculty or important member of the community passes a notice is sent to everyone. I hadn’t checked the account all summer, but when I read that he had passed away the first thing that came to my mind was the dream I had had and how vivid it had been. Musing further on what a great man he was and realizing that he was actually the reason I kept after religious studies. I noticed the date he had passed away in the notification and it hit me that the night he had been in my dream was the night after he passed away, thought I didn’t know it at the time. I wonder what you do and where you go the first night after you die?
When the fan blew this down from somewhere, I still don’t know where, it seemed fitting to post it here and share it with you. Its simple, its beautiful, it was sent.


Jesus Through the Decades
Lonnie D. Kliever

When I was a child, I was drawn to baby Jesus. And why not – he was surrounded with loving parents, choiring angels, awestruck shepherds, adoring wise men and talking animals! This is every child’s dream of existence – being the center of everybody’s world. When I was a child, Jesus was my Playmate.

When I was an older child, I was drawn to the teacher Jesus. I envisioned him as the gentle golden-haired man I saw in pictures in the family Bible and displayed on felt board at Sunday School. He told wonderful stories, taught important principals, and helped people in miraculous ways. When I was an older child, Jesus was my Hero.

When I was a teenager, I needed a stronger and stranger Jesus. I needed a Jesus that could deliver me from the turmoil of adolescence. I needed someone who could erase my guilt, reinforce my will, and reassure me in the face of death. When I was a teen-ager, Jesus was my Savior.

When I became a man, I was less preoccupied with myself – my guilt feelings, my failed vows, my shaky relationships, my own mortality. I was more concerned with making the world a better place. I found in Jesus the pattern of a way of life that made sense of things. He taught and demonstrated a life of justice and mercy as well as love and hope. When I was a man, Jesus was my Ideal.

When I became an old man, I began to see life more from the end than the beginning. I was less concerned about what I had not done in the past and more concerned about what I could do in the future. Surprisingly, at first thought Jesus did not seem as relevant to me as he once did. He died too young to show me how to grow old and die gracefully. But further reflection on Jesus has made me realize that he conveys the wisdom for living and dying at any stage in life. He reveals and evokes the passionate life that chooses worth over wealth, love over power, justice over privilege, and life over death. As an old man, Jesus is my Guru.

transition

The leaves are beginning to change colors, change colors and fall off the tree. Just beginning. If you stand on the dam by the dock and look at the trees down the alley of the big field right there, it looks sun kissed all the way down. Just the leaves on the edges of the trees on the edge of the field are turning yellow. When the wind blows now we’re beginning to get treated to swirls of leaves, and if you’re lucky a single red leaf will fall down next you every once in a while. Normally I am here during the summer when everything is lush and green, and then I leave and return sometime around Thanksgiving to find all the leaves having already fallen and every step you take you hear a crunch. This year I’ll be lucky enough to see the transition. This truly is a great place to watch the world go round from. A perfect axis.

i need an editor

Begin with a quote that I can use to talk within. Something biblical because that brings up all sorts of defenses and that’s what I really want to do is rile people’s defenses, get ‘em out in the open so people can become aware of what they’re sensitive about.

“Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” John 12:24

I’m just going to go ahead and tell you strait up I lifted that quote from another book. It’s not even mine. And I thought about whether I should do it this way or not, I thought about it for a good long while, and I decided that it’s a good quote and it’s a good way to do it even if someone else found it first, even opened their book with it, then it must be a really good way to start. It’s not like Dostoevsky wrote it either, I bet he ripped it off someone too, his favorite author or someone like that, and that person probably ripped it off someone else who was before either of them, or me, and then maybe that guy actually read it in the Bible himself and just maybe, theoretically, the guy a few guys before the first guy that copied down the Bible from oral storytellers, maybe that guy knows the person who really wrote it, but what does that mean, I mean really? The person who “wrote it” probably never wrote it he told it and then other people told it and then maybe those people are the one’s that actually wrote it down when they realized how much power comes to be conductible once you write down the revelation of God’s wisdom. So who really gets credit for conceiving that chunk of wisdom first? Is it the corn? The soil? The sun or maybe the water? Perhaps it’s the designer of the whole system? Is there an overarching designer or did the corn and the soil and the sun and the water all come to an agreement to help each other out on their own? Is their compatibility just a fluke? I suppose from a human standpoint it must be the person who saw the cycle in conjunction with all the parts that opened his mind up just right for just a moment for the common sense of the whole thing to slip in and BAM! Human awareness of wisdom is born. But I guess the next question is that if one person can simply observe nature and piece it together on their own, what’s to say someone else watching the same cycle in conjunction with all it’s parts has the same moment of revelation? Then who gets the credit for original ownership? Who gets to copyright it first? Whose got the patent on truth? Is the author the mind that was in control of the actual head that held the headspace that had the actual subjective center point where the moral about corn and death first popped through the invisible world of nothingness to linear sequential awareness, is that who gets credit for it? Well alright, if you say so, but what really interests me isn’t the author, it’s the sequential, linear, natural cyclical observation by the speaker that life cannot come but from death. This, is a corn stalk of wisdom, and I don’t know where it came from, but I know how easy it can be misunderstood, especially coming down through all those mind’s ripping it off each other. What’s the important part? Where does the wisdom lie? Same dimension as the corn, or in the dimension of my mind, or your mind, or our minds put together? Is it sticky in there?

1. establish the lens, the way the world looks through the speaker’s eyes. How do things relate to other things? What are my knee jerk responses?

Well I constantly want to keep getting things set up and situated. I guess my writer’s block is a little different than what I think about when I think about traditional writer’s block. My block is the pace of my ego, literally, because I am always going through the thought and never basting in it. This is the franticness of the beginning of the book having just got out of school.

In the back corner of a dark room during a lost moment in my life I finally found the resolve to forget everything I thought I knew up to that point and simply begin again. This didn’t seem like it would be too hard given the state I was in. One must be careful, life has a way of taking everything you worked so hard to believe in and wiping your ass with it. Where does this fear come in? Is it doubt? No no, it’s just everything I thought I knew before, until now. I feel like it’s doubt, I don’t doubt it in fact. It’s doubt. It’s doubt in me, it’s fear of losing the comfortable. It’s a lot of things. It’s fear that makes me put the beginning off just slightly to the next moment, just slightly out of now and before then but not undone, it is here and I am here with it, just about. I’m just about ready to really be here with it in the Now. Just about.

I guess I should have stopped and dealt with it the first time I felt warm water on my feet. It was pouring out from behind the gas pedals in my dirty gray packed to the brim A4. Packed with everything I couldn’t sell or give away from my apartment, but I was in no state of mind to be that reasonable. As if a three day music festival weren’t enough to leave me scrambled eggs in the front seat, my state of mind was incapacitated to say the least. Not really in the red, but not really with it enough to keep anything revved. Spun would be the word. Anxious, excited, fried, hopefully confused and a wee bit stoned, all those whirled together might do a little better job rounding me off.

This book is dedicated to my self. Not my self like myself myself, but my Self, which is perhaps better pointed to as The Self, our Self, the one Self. This may sound funny to you but it’s about you and you’re in it too I guarantee it. Accept and learn or deny and be a lesson for somebody else.

Has anyone else noticed a disturbing complacency in the minds of most people these days? Doesn’t it feel like, if this were some other time in history, the 60’s even, people would be up in arms and people would be disagreeing and they would be voicing it and it would make sense.
So I think I’ve tracked it down to people’s attention spans. Let’s begin by wondering, what exactly is “an attention span?” Now this may seem silly to break it down like this but it’s just plan psychological programming to pretend you are better than this question in some way. Better than any question for that matter. For those especially proud of their belief systems and those who champion their own set of lenses over all the other sets the world hands down, you especially should have no problem genuinely asking every conceivable question known to man, right? And every conceivable question cannot be measured, but it can be theoretically described. Where do those questions become conceived, or do they conceive themselves in some sort of strange, asexual phenomena of the mental states where questions literally conceive themselves? What is the creative process?
On some level I may be willing to entertain that question as truth since there is only one Self, but for the most part, for the day-to-day linear mental operations, questions seems to birth themselves spontaneously through the cracks of our beliefs about ideas that we already have in the makeup of our self before the new question, the threatening impending question arises to be noticed for a moment by the mind, and then sorted into the floating catalogs of the psychological salmon that we are.
Let’s take a few examples to work these abstractions out. The fundamental Christian, the fundamental Muslim, and the fundamental atheist. What’s the difference between these three?

I guess I am going to have to establish a lens through which the rest of the book can be seen.

farmdays

It rained long and hard today. Longest it’s rained consistently that I can remember. They fertilized the heck out of the fields a few days ago, so if we get a few days of sun here I bet the fields are going to explode. Dave came by this weekend and fixed the EZGO for us. Somehow the carriage keeps breaking and it needed to be welded back together. I don’t imagine it’s when we ride 6 deep on that thing that has anything to do with it. Anyways, I got a short little welding lesson. I have to admit I had my doubts Pop’s 1930’s model welder was going to work, but it did. I guess all those exposed wires don’t really mean too much. Have to give it to Dave though, he gets it done. He even reinforced the bracket with an additional piece of metal so hopefully it’ll last a little bit longer. He went to town on getting a muffler for the tractor as well. They have to actually machine a new muffler for it though, so he’ll be back. The turkey’s are everywhere. Big ol’ gobblers.

Here’s my question: is that a martini glass on the Davis Drug sign? What is that? This is not rhetorical, I want answers people. Participate!

Magic City Waffle House

I think I’m going to start a new series entitled, “I heard it at the Waffle House” because I hear the best stuff when I’m there. Like this morning for instance.
As I’m sure all you good patriotic Americans know, auditions for the new American Idol are underway. Here close to Birmingham they are especially underway because, again as I’m sure all of you know, Birmingham is home to two past winners and two runners-up. Bam! That’s right, it’s even coined the nickname “Magic City” according to all the papers. This is the place where dreams come true it seems.
Well anyways I go to sit down in my usual booth at Waffle House and end up sitting behind a mom and daughter duo and started doing what I do when I’m at Waffle House- listening in to what’s around me and then scribbling down as much of what they’re saying as I can because really, you can’t script reality better than reality can. Call me an eavesdropper if you will, I’m merely an observer, looking for new characters.
Well as it turns out “Laura,” a big boned southern gal and her momma, a bigger boned southern gal had just come back from auditions and, believe it or not, “Laura” had gotten called back for round two. The irony is that all I had to write on was the newspaper, and the front page of the newspaper of course was about “Magic City” tryouts.

Mama: God did it. You’ve got to thank God everyday, girl. God gave you that voice; I didn’t get a voice like that. Your whole life’s gonna change now girl! Change for the better, nothin’ but singin’ from here on out.

Laura: I was about to burst into tears when I walked away and then he was like “we’d like you to come back!” Oh my God! This is crazy! I can’t believe this ya’ll! I told ‘em this was my dream! Ya’ll are my favorite people!

Mama (to the waitress): I was just prayin’ and part of me knew. Part of me knew. See we lost my mama last year, and she had a baby she lost, and I was just prayin’ Oh Jesus please! My babies going to Hollywood! You’re going to Hollywood, baby!

Laura: This is so crazy! I need a cigarette.

Mama: Uh-uh girl! No more smokin’, no more drinkin’, nothin’ but singin’ now Two hours a day at least. Now you gotta stay away from trashy people girl. Everything you do is gonna be scrutinized. If they ask you about drugs you say “No way!” If they ask you about children, you say uh-uh.

This is where I wondered if this really was the American dream in its modern incarnation. I don’t want to be negative or anything, and maybe she has an angelic voice and that’s what they’re really looking for when they think about ratings and all that, but it was shocking how much these people had riding on being the next American Idol. I mean it was the equivalent of worshipping God to them. I wonder how much they prayed before she got a call back? I smiled, but I was disturbed a little bit too. It just made me really appreciate my blessings, and my level headedness, and that I don’t have all my eggs in one basket.
The cell phone kept ringing and they were going in and out talking to people on the phone, the whole Waffle House knew. When they left everyone wished her good luck and she says, “I’ll come back and remember ya’ll.”
“What song did she sing?” one of the truckers eating in the house asked after she left.
“Crazy, by Pasty Cline,” the waitress says.
“Written by Willie Nelson,” another trucker chimed in.
I think that second trucker was my favorite person in the WH today. He knows his music. Willie Nelson did write Crazy, and he doesn’t get enough credit for it.

Blurry Linear
.chs.

The blue edged mountaintops appear
To capture the slower fluidity of
Ocean waves, jagged up close
But curved and smooth from this far away.

Some days I cannot read on account
Of my focusing powers,
But those things a few steps away
Are clearly more defined than ever.

Are focal points meant to move
On currents of imputed understanding?
Or stabilize for erosion to patrol
the sight for stability?

"Traveler, there is no path. You make your path as you travel."

green acres is the place for me

four years without a roof

Dear Dad,
Well it’s been four years. I kept putting off starting my blog entry for this day so I could really get in the best state of mind to funnel out all the things I’ve been thinking and feeling and wondering and remembering about the past four years, and the previous 19 before that, and all that quest for perfection just isn’t going to really cut it today. You can’t force those states out, so I’ll just start and see where we go.
Grandma hasn’t been to the cemetery since you passed I don’t think except for the funeral to bury pop, and she had asked about going over there sometime, so I thought today was the perfect day. It’s not that she didn’t want to go; she just never really had the chance once Pop had his stroke. She truly wanted to be by his side all the time. It sure was beautiful out today, even a cool breeze here and there. A cool breeze on a day like this is pretty close to a miracle too if you ask me, it’s really really hot, so I think I’ll remember it that way. I had a few stones from Montana I brought back to put buy your headstone, mom asked me to put a lucky dime down there too, so I did, and I also put a piece of okra from Brooks’ garden for good measure. The spinny thing is named “Self” so I left Self there with you too.
It’s strange to go to the grave sight because I’ve psyched myself up for so long now about how you’re not really there, it’s just a symbol. Once you died I figure you morphed into omniscience. I don’t have to go somewhere to hear you laugh or let you know I’m thinking about you, you are always here. Recently it’s been coming to my awareness that you’re not only around here, you ARE here, you are me. Some days I hear you in my voice, the way a syllable comes out of my mouth and then I hear it a moment later and it sounds familiar and I realize its because I sound like you, maybe I am dad? A little? A lot? A whole? Almost? But its in my hands I see you the most. I used to only see it in Lloyd, and then Brooks’ hands when he would make a gesture or something and I would think, “Wow! There’s dad!” but it was never in me, or if it was I didn't see it. In the last month it’s been getting more and more obvious that these hands are my fathers. It’s hard because I’m getting to the age where I really wish I could ask you if you thought about these things to. How did you deal with the Truth as it reveals and grows and become organic in your life? How did you set your path? When did you know, or not know, you know what I mean?
My thoughts of you have become more emotionally pregnant as the years go by also which leads me to ask if I really dealt with losing you. What sort of emotional direction am I supposed to be traveling? Am I supposed to cry less and less as the years go by or be sadder and sadder you’re not here, in body, when I really need you? Some of these questions are dangerous to be asking myself, I know, but I’m not shying away from anything anymore. I worry I did such a good job romanticizing the whole thing so I could be a support for my family and others that I didn’t really deal with it. What the hell does dealing with it mean?
I remember something Mr. Dillavou told me at a Poly football game the first year after Dad passed away and it was that I was never going to stop missing Dad. Mr. D said he still thinks about his Dad and misses him almost everyday, and he lived a long time and had been gone for a while when we spoke. It was such a small comment but it stuck with me, and it rings truer and truer as I get older. I’m never going to stop missing dad, I’m never going to stop wishing we could have had more time together, but that’s what being a dad is. You happened to be an exceptional father, which is priceless and great, but makes it a lot harder to miss you. That’s what makes a father so powerful- you will never get away from thinking about them, for better or worse or the same, they are irremovably a part of who I am, who you are, it’s part of life. As I grow older and hopefully have children of my own one day I can only assume I will both miss and understand you even more. It’s hard to know when you’re kidding yourself, but I try hard to know and see the line, and when its healthy, sure as heck I’m gonna kid myself if it makes me feel better, but I accept that it is what it is. I wouldn’t be who I was today if it weren’t for you dad, and I wouldn’t be who I am if you hadn’t have died four years ago. This is just how it is, this is how this lifetime setup the lessons we are to learn. Some people teach the world best when they are alive, and some people teach when they are alive and emblazon and enlighten and illuminate when they are called away early and leave people to wonder why him? Why do the good die young?
Well I think I can tell you why, because death is not a bad thing. When you do all you’re supposed to do it would seem death is the ultimate reward. Some people have to wait 90 years for it because that’s what they need and what the people who know and love them need, but some people can pack a whole lifetime of knowledge and experience and work into fifty some years, and then its in their wake that they continue to raise the level of the sea.
I love you Dad, and I miss you, and I’m doing my best to try and hear you through clearly the ages. I’ve been staying close to your home and mining back into your letters and your mama and your homestead and the people in the community that knew you. Through the Sunday school with grandma at the church I’ve met many folks who seem to be the parents of your boyhood friends, and they all have nothing but the best to say about you and Lloyd, Jim too. I had no idea what a phenomenal person you really were, are, whatever, until you moved on and I had to figure out who you were and who I am. It sure is a lot of responsibility to live up to you, but I’m trying. I don’t think you want me to do the same thing you did, that’s why you worked so hard to give Brooks and I opportunities you never had. It’s the passing of a torch and I’m honored. I even feel lucky that I get the responsibility of going out and having fun for the both of us. “I live vicariously through you, so go have fun.” Was one of the last things you told me. I don’t really see where you end and I begin anymore. It’s fuzzy and it bleeds over and the biggest difference seems to be time. It’s weird, its intense, and I can’t explain it to anyone but you I guess. I kind of like it that way, but I think I need to get some feedback from somewhere else, something solid I can hug and can steer me back when I’m wrong. I’m going to go sit down with Uncle Tom real soon and tell him to just tell me what he thinks you think I should do, given everything. Isn’t that strange? I think uncle tom knows I’m trying, and in the same way you respected his religious convictions, I try, but it just isn’t that easy for me. There are too many legitimate paths to the truth I’ve been exposed to that to just choose the comfortable one because it’s the social/cultural tradition I came from seems, well, arbitrary. I need an intellectual jousting partner. I feel like that’s what Tom was to you. He told me about the unspoken, nonverbal appreciation of beauty you two had and now I understand why we always went to national parks for family vacations.
Its strange because the deepest, most important questions I shape my life around are all things you taught me, and all things I have no idea how you felt about them. You taught them to me in your wake before I had the chance to grow up and talk to you about them over a beer in the backyard. If you hadn’t died though, I’m not sure you could have taught me these things. It’s a hard inverse teaching method the universe seems to have set up for me, and that’s why I’m doing my best to stay as close as possible to the simple goods that are for sure- i.e. Family, until I’m good and steady enough to be sure I’m on the right path to happiness. Losing Pop was a powerful lesson too, but it gives me peace of mind to know he’s with you now. They just finished bailing the last of the hay today, but I guess you guys already know that.

I found a letter Jeff Frazier, who I don’t know but I guess worked for you, wrote back in 1999. I was going to post the letter I wrote to you and read at your funeral, but I think I’ll save it. This letter says a lot more and helps me keep perspective. I love you I love you I love you, see I feel like you even more the way you used to say, “Have I told you I loved you today?” “Yes Dad,” I would moan. “Well, I love you.” I didn’t understand how rare and lucky it is to grow up in an environment of unconditional love like that, and I’m sorry I ever moaned, but I know you know I was just a kid. I did know you loved me, I didn’t know anything else. I assumed everybody had a superdad, and as I get out and travel the world and meet as many people from as many backgrounds as I can, I see that your and mom’s unconditional love is the single most important blessing I have been given in this life.
This felt good to talk to you Dad, I’ll have to try this more often this year. I hear you listening and it warms my heart.

Love,
Cole

Ps. We’re going to get Grandma out to California for Thanksgiving! She’s finally going to get to see your magical house she’s heard so much about. It should be the ultimate field trip.



Dear Allan,

I’ve been meaning to drop you a line for some time, I keep thinking you will be back soon, and I can deliver my comments in person. It’s becoming obvious that that won’t be happening anytime soon. I just want you to know how much you are missed – by me – and many others.

I respect your right to keep your private life to yourself, and although no one seems to really know what is wrong, it’s obviously something very serious to keep you away so long. I give you my heartfelt concern for your health and well being. I wish your family a patient and empathetic heart as they care for you.

I hope you don’t feel that you’re a burden to them, as caring for a loved one with a long term illness is often the only way a family can demonstrate their love for someone like yourself, one who has given so much to his family. You are a great example to those of us with families, teaching the importance of keeping our priorities straight. As I have watched you over the years giving your boys every opportunity for success, and supporting them in their interests, I have stood back in awe of what a great father you are.

Your leadership is surely missed as CLS, however, Aubrey is doing a fine job holding things together. My hat goes off to you for putting together such a magnificent machine. Because of your foresight, your policies in developing the company have resulted in a group that hums so nicely, your absence has not crippled the operation- something most companies our size could never survive long term. You should be very proud of what you have done.

You deserve to cash in on the hard work over the years, and enjoy the fruits of your labors. I feel badly though, that you time off is to convalesce, rather than to recreate. I hope that day will also come soon for you. What a blessing to be in a position to take the time to recover, without the financial ruin of not being able to go to work and provide for your family.

Allan, I hope you know that many of us care for you personally. You are more than just “the boss” or “the owner”. You are our friend and our advocate for success. I very much appreciate the opportunity to have associated with you. You are a great man to work for, and I know I speak for many, because we talk behind your back all the time! I’ve never worked for someone who so many people have so many great things to say in his absence.

I wish you a speedy recovery and look forward to your return. If you ever feel like you need a break, I would love to come up and take you out to lunch sometime. No questions asked no stories told.

May God Bless You. Your Friend and Colleague,
Jeff Frasier



Miles From Nowhere
Cat Stevens

Miles from nowhere
I guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there

Look up at the mountain
I have to climb
Oh yeah, to reach there.

Lord my body has been a good friend
But I won't need it when I reach the end

Miles from nowhere
Guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there

I creep through the valleys
And I grope through the woods
'cause I know when I find it my honey
It's gonna make me feel good

I love everything
So don't it make you feel sad
'cause I'll drink to you, my baby
I'll think to that, I'll think to that.

Miles from nowhere
Not a soul in sight
Oh yeah, but it's alright

I have my freedom
I can make my own rules
Oh yeah, the ones that I choose

Lord my body has been a good friend
But I won't need it when I reach the end

Miles from nowhere
Guess I'll take my time
Oh yeah, to reach there.

time marches on

so it's been four years huh?
wow.
fucking wow.

---

my life is my message. -gandhi

in the fields

that's a huge mushroom

------

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: -
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -and gazed -but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

rockets

Mojo Madness

We gave grandma a spectacular fireworks show the other night, we even made her a special viewing seat out of assorted glow sticks and her flamingos. I’d been saving the Mojo Madness (a very large and long lasting firework) for sometime now, and the arts and crafts idea to build grandma a viewing zone and let her rip seemed like what I’d been waiting for. The pictures don’t begin to do the lawn justice. It had rained all day and there was lost of moisture and fog in the air, which really seemed to add to the glow of the sticks. We set out a design on the front yard and when Grandma came out she got this look of astonishment on her face. “Did we get new lights?”
“No no grandma, its just the glow sticks.” Then Lacey and I let her crack one and she was astonished again.
“You mean each of those lights is one of these? Now I like these. I like that they glow for a long time! They don’t zoom by!” “Boy those sure do seem like fun, especially if you had a bunch of people over. Shoo yes!” We gave her a few to take to bed with her and she went and neatly laid them down on her bed, next to her duck. Her big soft duck. Every morning I wake up and look in there and see grandma’s bed, made perfectly, with the duck resting right in middle, kind of the bed.
In between fireworks I was blowing huge bubbles and grandma wanted to play so I let her play with the hand held bubble maker and she loved it. I mean she loved it. I was sort of trying to overkill and explanation of how it worked for her and she just said, “Here let me just fool with it for a bit.”
“Heck yes grandma! That’s all I needed to hear!”
“Boy that’s good exercise,” she says. I really need to start a traveling circus and go to the elderly homes around here. Young children and old adults seem to be my root demographic, haha. It’s everyone in the middle I’m trying to reach though. Refuse to grow up! Stay young forever! Come live in Never-neverland with me! I know Tinkerbell will! Whose else is comin’ with me? Come on, whose comin’ with me?
Suit yourself, home is where I’ll be.

All times and all places are my livelihood. -Zen Saying

high powered loafing

Space and Time! now i see it is true,
what I guess'd at,
What I guess'd when I loaf'd on the
grass,
What I guess'd while I lay alone in
my bed,
And again as I walk'd the beach under
the paling stars of the morning.

-walt whitman

boomwhackers

wolfman's brother
phish

Well it was many years ago now
But I really can't be sure
That's when it all began then
I heard that knock upon my door

And the wolfman's brother
The wolfman's brother
Came down on me

The telephone was ringing
That's when I handed it to Liz
She said, "This isn't who it would be,
If it wasn't who it is"
It's the wolfman's brother,
The wolfman's brother
Came down on me

So I might be on a side street
Or a stairway to the stars
I hear the high pitched cavitation
Of propellers from afar

It's the wolfman's brother...
Come down on me

So with meaningless excitement
And smooth atonal sound
It's like a cross between a hurricane
And a ship that's run aground

It's the wolfman's brother
Coming down on - coming down on me

Dave fixed the bridge, looks real nice. They bailed like hell today but still lost a few bales to the downpour that finally passed through. It wasn’t a matter of effort though. I guess, as a farmer, you live to learn that sometimes mother nature doesn’t always just work out the way you like it.

The Boy in the Bubble
Paul Simon

It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
Thats dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And dont cry baby, dont cry
Dont cry

It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
Thats dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And dont cry baby, dont cry
Dont cry

Its a turn-around jump shot
Its everybody jump start
Its every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart

And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
Thats dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And dont cry baby, dont cry
Dont cry