Storage

People pass through the world once. There are no do-overs. There is no time to spare. There is no room for exclusion, for that which is excluded is irretrievably lost. I have seen in my life people who consciously exclude, who actually make the decision to do so. I cannot understand it. How can anything or anyone in existence be determined to so completely lack value? How does it happen that people find their space, their compassion, their very freedom so very limited? And by what? Where is the boundary, how has it come to exist? It is as if life had somehow grown its own box. It is as if life were a hard drive with a certain nonnegotiable capacity for storage. One apparently reaches the limit. One apparently becomes numb. I don't understand it. I think each one of us is more like a sky. Or anyway, I wish we were.

Transition

I have never thrived very well on change. And since change is an essential ingredient in life--terutama jika anda menikah dengan seorang perempuam Indonesia--I have not done a whole lot of thriving. One is inclined to live according to what he has been taught and to what he has observed from the earliest times. Unwittingly, we mimic our fathers and our grandfathers, entering into their unfinished struggles, investing our own livelihood in foregone conclusions. To break the mold is to challenge a longstanding law scarcely divisible from ones own anatomy. Freedom arrives only through unconditional surrender--to this one must become absolutely captive.

Desperado--
this is new--
on the run
from who knows who--
and to think, this girl
with a kitten in her blouse
needed only to get to Eugene--
I figure we may as well start
with bigger things--
This is the secret
to the poem,
the lock of the key--
If travel is what you are wanting,
begin with more exotic lands

Transition

Everything must go. I cannot picture it. Anyone want a keyboard? I think the thing cost $1500. Back in 1995. And an acoustic guitar. The language is leaving me. Which I suppose is just as well. One learns anew, one learns again, one learns what he presently needs to know.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This is an old saying which most people never really get. We just keep wondering why.

It seems that life's various punitive damages are conspiring more and more to corner me. Everything falls into line with the progress of an increasingly apparent fate. At last it becomes not a matter of choice but of necessity. I wonder if our personal destinies are foregone conclusions from the outset, freedom only an illusion, process pressed upon us, not an invention but a conceit.

Transition

It is easily the biggest change I have made in my life. It bears no resemblance to anything I have done before. I may as well be trading in everything that is known of me. And yet, life goes on, the old empire stands and functions, rocked to persistent slumber by the daily routine. Habit has no knowledge of revolution.

Where have they gone--
so many,
so beloved--
gone to keep council
with the lonelier planets--
and all their secrets
kept henceforth silent--
I will not hear so much as a whisper
again--
My heart is the loneliest
planet of all,
colder yet for my distant sun,
for flicker sharp
yet never warm--
a word devoid of once said love

Where have you gone
whose love was forever—
where have you spent your life
after all?
And what did you mean
by using words
reserved for better things
than lies?
Yet even now but speak
one time
let one last lie be comfort
And for the sake
of promised things
restore the truth
to lost illusion

My Ongoing Slow Motion Conversion to Catholicism

Well, I seem to have entirely lost the thread here. Which is not surprising. Things just don't cohere anymore. Any effort at extended concentration is a defeat from the outset. Compounding the aforementioned complications is the fact that I tend to change my mind about things pretty much day to day.

So I'll just start again.

There has long been a serious view expressed among Catholic historians that Martin Luther made a big mistake in encouraging a separation from the Catholic church, rather than taking up his objections with the authorities and working toward reforming the church from within.

To me, this seems rather callow. Either that, or intentionally obtuse. Given the corruption at the heart of the Catholic church at the time, and the love of money at the heart of the corruption, it hardly seems likely that the powers that existed would have been amenable to a friendly tea and exchange of ideas with Luther. More likely they would have boiled him in tea.

As the Catholics see it, the sins of separation are apparent, now more than ever, as manifest in the resulting confusion of Protestant denominations, the fragmenting of the one faith, the divergence of doctrine and practice.

And I agree.

Protestants, having left the mother church, then proceeded to fracture within their own faith, dividing again and again, becoming this and that and the other subset, each possessing, of course, the truth.

Is has been said often enough that this was the devils plan for the overthrow of Christ's church on earth.

Is that right?

I wonder why, then, the devil was not happy with the shambles that had already existed in the form of the Catholic church before Luther? Herein, as it seems to me, was a pretty thorough corruption of the body that had been intended by Christ--a magnificent vessel of greed, robbery, violence, war, persecution, intolerance, and deceit masquerading as the house of God--certainly not an accident, no, but a careful calculation of the powerful corrupt.

This, therefore, is the sin of the Catholic church--that it caused the very rebellion that it came to bemoan.

Why the devil? And how can the devil work other than through men? We do not possess what is holy, but rather are possessed, and the Spirit will ever seek his own.

My Ongoing Slow Motion Conversion to Catholicism

Where was I now?

I suppose there was some component of rebellion in my initial interest in Catholicism (something better suited, in a historical sense, to Protestants). It was a rebellion against what I had found to be an empty noisiness in the Charismatic churches; or rather, there seemed to be a lot of generally pleasing noise in the form of praise songs (complete with guitars, drums, bongos, saxophones, trumpets, symbols and whatever else would clatter or blare), and then nothing. Or worse than nothing sometimes.

I had the feeling that some of these people, especially those in leadership positions, were flaunting ignorance, of history, of philosophy, even of Jesus himself (though of course they knew it not), as if it were some sort of badge of merit. How could they tell us to burn JD Salinger? The Catcher in the Rye? Had they ever read it? What was their big issue about the kinds of movies we might watch? Was the peace and purity of Mary Poppins really superior an honest approach toward comprehending the world, however fallen, the heart, however broken?

Yes, I wanted more and more to know Jesus, to see him in action, and yet I was getting farther away rather than nearer. My wife was also getting farther away--from me, that is. She began to talk about the Lord coming in the clouds any time now, she began to talk about flying up to heaven, she began to listen to Christian radio broadcasts predicted the immanent advent of this same Hope of Glory. Next week, in fact. And somehow there were to be aliens involved. And angels. A the sounding of a trumpet that would be heard worldwide.

Living yet in my mind, being yet dead in the spirit, this was way too much for me to swallow, let alone digest. I decided to quit the whole thing. And then I happened to read something else that made sense. A little book on Catholicism.

And I said, Hmm ... hold on a sec ....

My Ongoing Slow Motion Conversion to Catholicism

I have always had a soft spot for the Catholic Church.

Well, not always, but anyway ever since I became interested in Christian things. My first serious interest is Christian things of any kind arose from a desire to refute my second wife's new found convictions (which I did not like at the time because they did not seem very much fun). As it happened, however, the harder I tried at this, the more I failed.

It seemed, in short, ridiculously enough, that she was right--not about everything, of course, but at least about Christ. I could not refute him. Moreover, far from being refuted, or even chipped, or even dinged, Christ took hold of me--and he had no intention (though I did not know it then) of ever letting go.

It was my mind then, my thought processes that had suddenly been commandeered by the truth, but not my spirit, which yet lay dead, quite immune to the musings in my head. My wife would drag me along--me and my thoughts--to various Charismatic churches, and I found quite instantly that the better part of my brain would need to be checked at the door in order for the remainder of my person to endure service within the sanctuary.

It's all about worship, she would say, we are here to worship the Lord.

But didn't you hear? He just now said to burn my copy of Catcher in the Rye!

Catcher in the who?

And here comes the collection plate again? How many times has it come around now? Three? Four? I've lost count.

May the Lord forgive your greediness.

And so on.

It was the strangest sort of feeling. I came to feel by and by that the church was the loneliest place in the world. He who had so captured my attention was somehow absent from these proceedings which declared his name.

What did this mean? Why did I care.

I missed him.

(to be continued)

The End

This is the end just barely begun This is where we come to surrender Full of shame Full of sorrow to face the glint in the enemy's eye to acquiesce to his pitiless terms This is the end This is the end where the flags of hope are folded and buried Here is where we come to fail and eat the enemy's pompous communion to drink the wine of wasted blood Our hearts have been the fountain Our bones make up the bread Here is the end that would never come as final now as the Biblical flood The end of life the end of love This is the end of every work of every word of every kiss where love's embrace is swallowed in the maw of hatred's last hurrah And laughter peels like bells ding-dong and summons the beak of the bitter crow (comment on this)

Networking

Today my wife is networking. I guess when you network, you meet with other people and give them money or some other form of exchange so that they can grow their own business, whilst they give you money or some other form of exchange so that you can grow yours. It is an arrangement of mutual support, an I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine sort of scenario. The accomplished networker, I suppose, will come out with more scratches than he gives. It is an investment for gain.

So it happens that we now have three or four medical insurance policies along with a couple life insurance investments. If either I or my wife get sick and/or die soon, we will be sitting pretty. Well, one of us will be. Admittedly, the odds are against my striking the gold, given age and illness versus youth and good health--but you never know. Accidents happen, right? In a certain way, one seems safer in betting on the accidental than on the expected. That, anyway, has been my experience in life.

In any case, I am included today, as I have a week off work anyway and obviously nothing better to do. Nonetheless, the coffee shop chosen for the networking meet was way too hot for most life forms, and so I excused myself in favor of a table at the Starbucks a mere block away. When it comes to decent air conditioning, Starbucks knows their stuff.

Another day of triple digit temperatures. I wonder why we didn't go to river instead. Oh well, business is business and play is play--and time is money, whether it is going in or out.

Confounding Stuff

It seems that if you have two stars of equal brightness, the star that is furthest away in space (even hundreds of light years further) will yet appear brighter than the one that is closer to earth.

Go figure.

As always, I look for a moral to the story.

It seems, at least according to science, that a tree falling in the forest with no one there to hear, will in fact make a sound. This is somehow scientifically demonstrable. I have always believed the opposite (and still do).

I remember one time when my son's psychiatrist was testing him on his responses to familiar proverbs, I myself offered the 'wrong answer' to one scenario. For the rest of the interview, the guy devoted his attention to me. Later on he prescribed pills for my son that had some small chance of paralyzing his throat and causing death. These he prescribed as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

If it don't kill ya, it'll cure ya. But of course it wouldn't have.

These pills are no longer prescribed in psychiatry. Nor anywhere else.

It Just Occurred to Me . . .

One of the most wonderful things in life as I have found it is that beautiful young Asian women are often attracted to ugly, old white men, such as myself--even to the point of marriage.

One of the most unfortunate things is that, apart from being Asian, they are no different than any other woman.

Satan explained to Jesus, in The Last Temptation of Christ, that there is only one woman in the world--one woman who merely comes with different faces.

Sometimes that guy comes dangerously close to making a point.

But then I guess that's what he's all about.

The Demon of Gluttony from Yokohama

Speaking of spiritual matters, I think our Japanese exchange student may be possessed by a demon of gluttony. I should not really have thought so had his eating habits been anything less than supernatural, and yet, given that they are so, I have had to look for other worldly answers to an unworldly capacity to stow away a week's worth of groceries in a single day. How is it possible, I have wondered? Seeking a natural conclusion, some sort of explicable scenario, I have yet found none. The evidence leads me only to extravagant theories.

How is it possible? How? He is short, he is thin, and yet I have seen him swallow entire refrigerators. Again and again he emerges from his room, fills another plate, and returns to his lair of culinary frenzy. Six hotdogs, two hamburgers, a package of garlic potatoes, mixed greens, milk, a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, cheese, Chinese noodles.

How can it be? It is quite clearly impossible. And yet . . . and yet . . . the plates come out and go in, come out and go in. My mind has become disjointed in trying to grasp the thing.

The Last Temptation of Christ

Just finished reading The Last Temptation of Christ. Curious experience. At first I disliked the book, not on the basis of ideology or any perceived sense of blasphemy in the content, but merely because I did not like the style of the writing. Of course one has to keep in mind that this is a translation from Greek and no doubt loses as much in the process as any other translation. The vernacular in language, in conversation seemed to suffer the most, as it seemed archaic to the point of being a bit funny. At some points the disciples sounded more like Irishmen arguing in a bar room than first century Jews. I suppose I should take a peak at another translation in the future (one of the many, many things I will never get around to, I'm certain).

Frankly, I was teetering on the edge of putting the book down and re-reading Mark Twain's Puddin' Head Wilson instead, when a providential (in hindsight) set of accidents occurred; to whit, the dog ran into the table in the yard, the table fell over, the book bounced through the grass, ejected its marker on the way, and when I retrieved it I could only hazard a rough guess as to where I had been in my reading.

What I found was that in the space of what cannot have been too very many pages, Jesus himself had transformed, between this reading and the last, from a cowardly, tormented, self-absorbed youth to Christ--and the sight of Him, the Christ I know, was like strength and sweetness admixed, refreshing, reviving, reassuring.

How very hard it is, I realized, to look upon Jesus yet undiscovered, yet unfinished, still struggling through all the weaknesses of life, of the flesh, of the ego, of fear and pain and desire. There is as little comfort to be had in this as in watching another man suffer a seizure, or in hearing the rantings of a schizophrenic in response to his invisible voices.

Power gone awry, power unfocused, power uncomprehending is terror itself.

Yet here, having passed through the scourging and crucifixion of life in the flesh, was Jesus the Christ, suddenly comprehending all things and all mankind, leading now, serenely confident, God Himself, the good shepherd, on the road to peace unto death and forever after, world without end.

As I understand it, Kazantzakis, after The Temptation appeared in print, was excommunicated from the orthodox church. This in itself seems odder by leaps and bounds than his flights of imagination and invention as set down in his book--for the content is, if nothing else, astoundingly and unapologetically orthodox in its conclusions--even to the point of having Matthew himself write his gospel while actually in the company of Jesus. This is a notion rejected nowadays by many churches, and most certainly rejected by most scholars and seminarians. No, they say--it cannot have been so--the gospel could not have been written earlier than 60 years after the crucifixion.

Blasphemy? No. The blasphemy lies s in not thinking, not challenging oneself, not struggling to comprehend, not searching the heart--and Kazantzakis was guilty of none of these.

Jamie

Yesterday evening I looked about for any hint of Jamie for the longest time (when I was supposed to be working, mind you). Why? I don't know. It's just so weird to me that a person can simply disappear--especially a person one had been so close to in the past. I looked at name combinations, maiden name, married name; places, hobbies, and there was nothing. The one mention of her existence that I found was on a web page from 2003, which was even before our relationship. But where since then? She has not fallen completely from my heart, and yet apparently has fallen from the face of the earth. To those who are so very gone, even the simplest of greetings--Hi, how are you--are swallowed in the same deaf and mute absence. Why must our lives be so very final?

Karma

I was just thinking the other day about what in my life has hurt the most, what has been most regretted, what the happiest, what most shameful, what of honor and what of dishonor.

Somewhere deep down I think I believe in karma--not strictly the Hindu sort of karma, but a karma that works right along in the course of this life. More like reaping what one sows.

I think what has hurt the most, and in a way rather curiously so, has been Jamie's refusal to ever speak to me again. I hate for things to remain unchangeable, without the possibility of apology, without the possibility of forgiveness. I keep all doors open that I can think of in eternal invitation of a word, a chance.

Silence is deadly. The thought of taking it to the grave is almost unbearable.

Progress Report

So things are not so far going well with my book. I shouldn't be surprised. My agent done told me. But I guess one anticipates the best, despite the odds. Or anyway, I've always been that way.

But the word is, received just this morning, that no publishers have so far expressed interest. Neil tells me that we still have a lot more to send to, but still I can't help feeling bummed.

Why?

Well, as the day passed, and as I had nothing better to do, I started to kind of parse this out. Why does the possibility of not being able to publish this book make me feel depressed? What has been the nature of my hopes, what has been anticipated, what changes would take place in my life?

As for the latter question, having published a book some years back, I already know that nothing of essence really changes in life. I mean, you have a period of high spirits I suppose, and pride, but there is nothing really to sustain it over time. You find eventually, in fact, that you rather dislike the book, and so you begin to work on something else. Or you find something better yet to do with your spare time.

Writing this present book was to begin with something of an accident in itself. The thing sort of rose to existence at the suggestions of people who had read my entries in online MS communities, so that eventually I took the cue and thought, Well maybe I should. And so I did.

Did a lot of sweat and effort go into the project--hours of struggle, painful doubts and soul searching?

No.

The fact it, little more effort was required day to day than putting my pen to the paper (or rather, my fingers to the keyboard). It was not only fairly easy, it was fun. And this, as I concluded while sitting on the toilet, is the key.

Of course, I would like to do something for my wife which would result in the form of honor, not to mention money (of wait, I just did). I believe it would be of great importance to her for me to make money through these efforts. And I wouldn't mind the money either, if only to be able to give it to her.

And of course I would like to be able to leave her something--in the same sort of way that I left my ex-wife (though sort of accidentally) $200,000 dollars and a house. It would be something that she could put away, a security I had been able to leave.

Nonetheless, when it comes right down to it, what bummed me out most of all was the thought of losing my reason for all the pleasant mornings I have spent at Starbucks, or in the yard at home in the summer, writing, remembering, philosophizing, searching, and sharing. It has become a part of who I am, of what I do. How else am I to spend my time and garner like reward?

And so it happens that while still on the toilet I realized with some relief that failure to publish need not be translated as a lack of reason for writing. If, after all, I have failed to please an editor, or editors, I have to remember that I did not intend to please him, or them, in the first place. I wrote what was in me. I explained myself.

And I do not think they fault me for that. They're looking to make money, and that is the basis that they buy upon. Money is nice. I like it too. But money and writing are two different things. Just like apples and oranges.

The Truth In Lies

Some people say that I exaggerate. Some say that I lie. My second ex-wife used to say that I would lie when the truth would do just fine. And she was right. The truth might have been just fine, but then again it is often not very interesting, nor very funny.

It was Mark Twain who famously said When in doubt, tell the truth. But you see, the trick is to avoid being in doubt.

A lie can be a window to another world, whereas the truth is restricted to what is factual, what is known. A lie can also be a route to the sort of truths that try to hide.

Consider the work of fiction, for instance. Was there ever, in truth, an Ishmael, a Pequod, an Ahab, a white whale? No . . . and yet how else shall we make our way to the truths that lie beneath the surface of the fictitious voyage than to believe in the lie, the ship, that conveys us? What truth can the white whale sound to the depths other than the truth of the lie?

How great would the Great Gatsby be if he were a matter of fact, a two column piece in the business section of the New York Times?

I was sitting once in a bar, back in my drinking days, when a man of like age sat down beside me. It happened that I was wearing an old army coat I had gotten at the Goodwill. Because of this--a hint, an invitation--the man asked whether I had served in Vietnam.

Yes, I said.

And though I had not served, and though this was a bald faced lie, it turned out that I learned more of essence, of truth about the Vietnam War that night that I had ever before learned in a newspaper or a history book--so that now, in some way, I have been there--Yes, with the 1st Marines at Khe San, at the airbase in Danang, in the rice paddy where the water buffalo had stepped on a mine.

We shared an experience within the character of common humanity--he was a veteran, I was a drunk, and we had both been injured in a war.

My mother used to say that life itself is a lie, an illusion. And it is, so it is.

For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.
--Heb 13:14

Procrastination

I am procrastinating. Not my favorite pastime, yet here I am nonetheless. See, I'm supposed to be editing my book per the suggestions of my agent, but I just can't seem to get around to it. By way of excuse, I will say that my mind is just not up to even remembering what I've already written, let alone altering or adding to the same in any cogent way.

It means, in short, that I must read the whole book again--everything that has already at some point issued from my own mind--and then try to apply other material or adjustments according to a swiftly slipping grasp of the whole.

I will try to begin next week.

Wish me luck.

Up Against The Wall, Slime Ball!

My second wife, who fancied herself to be accomplished in the art of child-rearing, and whose credentials for the same consisted in the main of having had three children by three fathers (something which leads me to believe child-bearing would have been a more apt description), would often cite the essential secret of her success as having had the will to apply regular beatings.

I myself make no final judgment regarding whether this habit led to successful results. I guess the jury is still out, as is the case with most things in life. I will say that they have grown up to be pretty good kids--or adults, I should say, being now 33, 30, and 21. I would say that they are generally polite, have a basic sense of decency, and probably will not conspire to blow up the world.

On the other hand, I do believe that they fear their mother still, and so perhaps suffered somewhat in growing into a full appreciation of their own independence, their own power of decision making. They have, therefore, some lack in drive, in setting and attaining goals, in overcoming obstacles.

But to return to the point, which I had not actually gotten to yet, it so happened the other day that I remembered an incident in which my second wife (let's call her Georgia, because that is her name) set out to demonstrate to her younger sister how she should go about disciplining her own somewhat unruly children.

You gotta show 'em that you mean business, Georgia said. You gotta put the fear of the devil into 'em.

Fear. The very word has no connection with Chrissy--sweet, quiet, kind-hearted Chrissy. One can no more fear her than he can fear Winnie the Pooh or The Care Bears.

But they're not afraid of me, Chrissy said. How can I make them afraid of me, Georgia?

I'll show ya how, Georgia answers, grabbing at the same time the collar of 8 year old Jason's shirt--Chrissy's first born, and biggest offender.

You jack 'em up against the wall like this! Georgia says, then you stick your knee in their gut like this--

Now Jason is giggling--Auntie Georgia is always so funny--and yet he is always keeping a wary, rather worried eye on his mother's face, watching for any sign that this might actually be dangerous in some way.

And then you get right up in their face and say"Up against the wall, slimeball!"

Having demonstrated the technique, Georgia unhanded Jason, who stood adjusting his collar, straightening his pants.

Now you try it.

Me, Chrissy says. Me? I can't do it. It's not the same.

Chrissy's children are of course laughing uproariously at the very idea.

Go Chrissy! Do it! They're laughing at you! My God, don't ever let 'em laugh, Sis!

Okay! Chrissy says, rushing forward like a fuzzy bunny rabbit, reaching for Jason's shirt front, pulling up the collar as if it were a blanket in a doll's bed.

And in the sweetest, most tender, most apologetic tone of voice, she suddenly pleads with all her force--

Up against the wall, slummm-buggg!

You see, not only had she gotten the technique wrong, but she had bobbled the very words to be used, rendering them not threatening but endearing.

Poor Chrissy. She never did learn.


Author's note: Jason went on to earn a degree at the University of Washington and works now in State goverment. Chrissy's daughter, Becca, trains horses for a living and is happily married with children of her own. Chrissy herself helps to raise her grandchildren in the same ineffectual manner.