Asking for Directions

As you might have noticed there have been no posts in the last few days.  That’s because yours truly has been sunk in the mire of technological difficulty.  I pushed a wrong button and lost contact with my blog.  Thanks to my friend Ted and my son Benjamin, I found my way back. 

To tell you the truth, I felt ripped off.  And slightly paranoid.  My experience with computers has not been stellar, more like black holish (I get near them and am sucked in while being smushed by their power).  My son told me that they are dumb machines, capable of doing all kinds of things, but as with any machine, you turn the wrong widget, it reacts badly.  He told me to keep pounding (I don’t think he used that word, but it sounds good to me) on them until they give you what you want or you throw them through a window and start over.  He also said that you have to defend yourself against their seemingly whimsical reactions.  Save, Save, Save. 

So, I’m taking some steps to do just that. 

But in the midst of all the fireworks and gesticulations, I discovered again that the best asset to have in the midst of a problem is a friend. 

So, thanks to Ted and Benjamin. 

Blessings be upon you.

Isn’t Hypocrisy Fun?

 

To the north of our house is a gazebo, about 12 by 12, roofed, electrified, cement floor.  It’s a lovely place to sit in the shade during the heat of the day.  It’s a wonderful place to put your feet up after working, or a place to have a drink, whether you’re smoking a cigar or not. 

Today as I sat there considering a toad who was working his way under the table that supported my feet, a wasp, black, nipped in the middle, stinger hanging out the back came to rest on my shoe. 

Bees are part of God’s plan.  Wasps are one of Lucifer’s additions to the plan.  Bees sting at the cost of their lives, so rarely do so.  Wasps sting if they have a bad hair day.  They punish the closest bit of protoplasm for the barometric pressure.  They are builders, they make paper and mud homes to raise more nasty little black terrors. 

And here was one of the devil spawn on my shoe.  Then another came buzzing down to join his compatriot.  Oh goody two of them, communicating about how to torment other beings, having a meeting right there.  They took off together, flew in tight formation up through the rafters up to the roof beams to a clump of vines, where there was a formation of other living nasties crawling and buzzing there.  It was a headquarters for a network of assassins!

The logical reaction to such a discovery is to go to the garage and find some sort of chemical that would destroy them.  I mean, I hate ‘em .  I kill ‘em right?  That’s logical. 

Large but.  There is nothing logical about killing.  There is nothing logical about putting chemicals into the environment that poison things.  I mean, this is not inside our house.  This is part of the great outdoors.  They were here before we got here.  Where do I get off treating them like they have no right to life?

I wouldn’t be surprised if there were Native Americans in our family tree.  Maybe it’s the Druid thing.  Who knows?  But in spite of my difficulties with killing we’ve got a problem.  If they nest up there, we can’t rest in peace.  It’s like Orcs setting up a nest next to my Elven home.  Ain’t happenin’. 

Ok, no chemicals.  But water is natural, isn’t it?  So, I moved the cushions, got the hose with the best pressure, made sure there were no kinks in it, set the controller on ‘power wash’, and blasted the living crap out of the headquarters.

Call me a nasty non-environmentally aware idiot, or call me a hypocrite, why didn’t I use poison?  Go ahead, call me names.  But this is the best I can do to make deals with my better angels and my demons.  The wasps can build in my trees, down by the creek, just not here. 

I wish I could talk wasp.  I could explain the whole thing to them.  I doubt they’d appreciate my argument.  They’d sue me after they stung me.  And then they’d laugh.  I wonder what a wasp laugh sounds like.

Comments

 

I just found a page of comments, buried in the behind the scenes stuff for the Blog.  People have been actually saying things about what I write!  I thought I was just sending my impressions and ideas out into a cyber reality without bumping into anything. 

The page says ‘no comments.’  It hides what they say.  I wonder if that’s to protect me, or to give me control of what gets displayed.  I tried to move the comments I found onto the page, but no such luck.  I’ll have to get a more cyberly capable person to help.

But to all you folk who have commented, thank you.  You’re very kind.  Now, how do I communicate back?  I’ll have to ask about that too.

A Rose

 

I sent information for the bulletin to a church where I’m preaching.  They wanted a short Biography for me.  It took me over an hour to put something together and then I had to call Chris, who’s visiting her mother, to put it into any kind of order that didn’t sound like a badly cooked egg.  Even with the grace and glory she was able to add, it sounded like an obituary. 

How do we communicate to others about ourselves?  That, I surmise is something of an art.  But to do it in a paragraph, a few sentences, taking into account the context, then, even art begins to falter.  The listing of educational degrees earned doesn’t say a word about learning.  To speak of years of work says nothing of the people, the accomplishments, the pain, or the joy rolled into those years. 

I was mowing the lawn yesterday.  Just within the verge of a bed of orange and red Canna Lilies, a climbing rose works its way up through a Crepe Myrtle.  I didn’t plant it.  It’s all the way over by the creek.  But there it was, reaching toward the light.  One perfect bloom, deep red, full, petal after petal rested among all the foliage.   I had to stop, though rain could be coming at any minute, I had to stop.

How many roses bloom, unnoticed?  How many bits and pieces of our lives, revelations, epiphanies of glory and beauty go unrecorded, unlisted, unknown by any but ourselves?  That rose will bloom for years, allowing me to remember a moment of heat and sweat, and the smell of mown grass, and the clouds pregnant with thunder and rain.  Yet it will never make my bio. 

Perhaps if I put that there, instead of my degrees, they’d know me better.  But then they’d think I was some kind of nut.  Well?

I’ve got to go back and visit it today.

The Attic

 

Storage space is a rare commodity in our home.  As a result, we’ve poked around trying to find places to appropriately sock away stuff.  We have two attics here.  One is through a closet (reminds me a bit of Narnia).  That’s where we put luggage and off season clothes.  It’s awkward but it’s easy to get to. 

The other one is larger, but it’s something of a pain to access.  I have to wedge a step ladder in front of the washing machine, pop an unhinged hatch up into the space and climb into the oven or refrigerator depending on the season.  Insulation abounds, no floor to cover it.  Lots of space but not lots of usable space.  What floor is afforded has already received the Christmas debris.  So, I’m putting in a floor. 

It doesn’t sound difficult, but it’s awkward to say the least.  As I get pieces of plywood cut to fit through the hatch, fitted and ooched into place screwing them down with the driver I also brought up, being careful to stay balanced on the rafters (a bit of a slip could put my foot through the ceiling) all the while dripping on whatever I’m doing, then I have more floor from which to work.  Oh, and I have to be careful not to fall through the hatch.  Chris has warned me I’ll dent the washing machine. There is hope.  But the present tense is tense, and drippy.  Anything to be stored up there should be stuff that we don’t need weekly. 

I guess we all have attics.  Places where we put things, memories, joys, fears, hobbies, relationships that we want to keep, but we don’t access them too often.  We can’t keep everything.  Then we’d never be able to appreciate things, we’d only keep them.  Some people like to keep life stripped down to bare walls and floors.  Why keep stuff?  My life tends to have more to it than bare walls and floors.  I like to do more than function.  Everything I keep is about a story, a person, a glory, and almost every bit and piece is valued.  We are still getting rid of stuff.  But I hope that we never strip our lives down to function and only that. 

As I get more floor laid, I kind of like the space, hot though it may be.  Attics are interesting.  The bones of the house are visible.  The how’s of the structure are there to see.  We’ve got a good house.  The heating guy said it’s tight.  He spends a lot of time in attics. 

I’ve got a few pieces cut.  Time to visit our home’s bones. 

Novels

 

Novels are different than essays or even short stories.  I’ve got three novels that I’m working on right now.  Two of them are in re-writes, and one is just beginning.  The amount of focus and organization necessary to tame these beasts is a whole different discipline. 

But as I write them I get to submerge into another dimension of life, creating characters that breathe and act according to personalities that sprout in my head and then claim a life of their own.  That’s where the organization and focus comes in.  If they are to live as characters that allow ‘a willing suspension of disbelief’ (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) their attitudes and dreams and fears and actions need to be grounded in that which has gone before and as they come in contact with others the dance that is created must step to the themes of the story as well as the interaction of the characters and the environment. 

See what I mean?  Getting going is the most difficult.  It’s like raising a kid.  Who are these people going to be?  From where do they come?  How do they think and react?  And what is their story?  Once they start walking, it’s a lot like a child.  They teeter along and then they run.  It’s the initial stages where the false starts and falls take place.

So, next time you read a book, take a moment to embrace the work and passion that it took to gather all of this together and allow it to tell its story.  It’s quite a journey.

The 4th

 

A couple churches wanted me to preach this past Sunday, but I said no.  The choir director at Chris’ congregation was putting together a men’s chorus to help celebrate Independence Sunday.  That’s right up there with Pentecost, right?

I have a hard time with putting on a patriotic show in church.  That’s God’s place.  Why are we waving a flag?  Aren’t we on God’s turf?

We were given satin bow ties to wear.  Stars and Stripes.  My dog Sam used to growl in his chest.  It was more of a rumble.  I think I rumbled when I put on that tie.  But I did and we sang some good harmony to “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” 

The preacher said that he liked the 4^th.  But it wasn’t a country or a flag that made us patriotic.  It was an idea, the idea that those crazy people (I added crazy) put together in the Declaration in 1776.  He read a good chunk of it and the hair came up on the back of my neck. 

Thomas Jefferson was nuts.  He had so much to lose.  Most of them did.  But they all signed it.  They put their names on that parchment and reached out beyond sense and logic into a dream. 

I’m an American.  I’m not continental.  That’s a GPS coordinate.  I’m part of this same dream.  I’ll wrassel with folks about how to celebrate it, but I’m just as proud of my country, maybe more so, than people who don’t approve of my politics.  And that’s their right and privilege.  I believe in the dream that those crazy guys reached for and I will go on believing in it in spite of our feeble efforts to add or detract (that’s from another dreamer).  Maybe I need to be a bit more humble and climb down off my high horse once in a while. 

So, whoopee do!  Happy Birthday USA.  I’m going to Bar B Q tomorrow and put out the flag and I think I’ll read the Declaration.  Some good stuff in there.

But please don’t make me wear that stupid tie in worship.  Satin?  Oh please.

 

Silence

 

It’s early.  It’s Saturday.  It’s fourth of July weekend.  Even the birds are quiet.  Maybe they get time off too.  The angel clock in the living room is doing its thing, making sure there are some sounds.  But quiet rules. 

I’ve been in the woods when there were moments like this, rare moments.  Living things move, and they tend to make noise.  The wind in the trees makes noise.   At the shore there is the systole and diastole of the surf, and all the players in the gull league.  They’re called Laughing Gulls for a reason.

Sound is the norm of life. 

They say there is no sound in space.  You need atmosphere to carry the waves.  Here on these islands of rock, within envelopes of air, sound tells of movement and life.  So this moment is a startling exception.  I can appreciate it as such, but it’s strange, alien.

I’ve been in church sanctuaries that felt like this.  The atmosphere is other, different than the norm.  There is a sense of presence in it.  Without all the distractions, there behind it all.  Something, without shape, in the silence.

There, a mocking bird decided to hold forth.  I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed.  I think I’m grateful to be alive.