Funny what you'll find on the internet.

My brother-in-law, Mark commented on my recent Facebook profile photo where I'm wearing a beach towel at the Yuba River, "It's funny what you find on the internet. We've been looking for that towel ever since your last visit..." He was writing from Cabo where they went, apparently after spending significant time looking for the towel that ended up in our bag after our last swim in his backyard pool.

I was reading today in a friend's posting about her struggles with cancer how she and her family were on the "cancer coaster", an appropriate picture. I decided to read down in to the comments written by others and came across this quote:

"Peace is not the absence of troubles, trials and torment, but calm in the midst of them".

It's very well put. I've observed people or heard stories of people who have gone to great lengths to remove troubles and the rest. The psychatric community calls it "medicating", which used to be their term but now means, "doing inappropriate things to compensate for painful emotional experiences". Sometiems that involves drugs, both street drugs and prescription drugs.

In the midst of all that, when you stop to think about it, medicating is one way to pursue "calm in the midst of..." Unfortunately, of course everybody knows, it doesn't last long. Only as long as the chemical that is bathing our brains stays "on-board", as they say.

The addict moves from seeking calm in the midst of, to constant belief that with their habit topped off, they are absent of torment.

Devon, number three son, was conceived by the magical prompting of hormonal activism between his birth father and birth mother. Two teens just caring for each other... and both highly experimenal when it came to street drugs. Devon's enuterine experience was one bathed in on-board medicating for troubles he knew nothing of at the time. His troubles began once he took his first breath; which as it happened, was on a paramedic's geurney at a crack party. He had to work hard for it too. He was born dehydrated, wrapped still in the amniotic sac... and dead. All thanks to street drugs and the pursuit of the absence of torment.

He came to us, just after birth, addicted to methamphetimines and with a host of other physiological challenges that present when a developing zygote assembles with alien chemical assistance. Devon was introduced to us, 14 years ago, by a woman appointed by the state as a foster parent while his birth mother decided what to do with him.

His foster mother was also, not ironically, his step grandmother. She married a man who came with children, one of whom was a girl who would one day bring Dev into the world. For whatever reasons along the way she and her husband became licensed for foster care, and when the state removed Devon, she stepped in to take him temporarily.

I was curious to see who wrote out the quote, "Peace is not the absence of troubles, trials and torment, but calm in the midst of them". I read down to find a name, it took me a few seconds to place it, and I blinked and read it again.

The signator of the guest comment about my friend's battle for life with unwelcome cancer was Devon's step-grandmother - also known as his once foster mother. It's a small town of course, but besides her name, I know very little about her. I'm told that she's a lot like the rest of us, just trying to do her part with what she has both material and intangible. She could not keep him 14 yeas ago, her plate was full with other special needs children. Though her home was not calm, per se, I am almost certain that she was the first caring woman to hold Devon in love.

I doubt if Devon felt it through the torment of preemie, screaming, withdrawal-shaken fear of this alien world. Nevertheless, there it was in an almost indistinguishable way, but mabe just enough, "calm in the midst of".

It is, yes, so funny what you find on the internet these days.

Scaling life.

I've been considering the idea that everything in our worlds must be understood within the context of something else in order to be truly grasped.

Once when I was a kid, I remember seeing a picture of a fishing lure in a fishing magazine my dad had. The lure was photographed next to a quarter coin. It struck me at the time what a good idea that was. Everybody knows what a quarter is, so the lure by comparison, had practical context.

So, now with the rest of my world it seems. Scale is more important than ever. I am trying to apply it so as not to minimize those I love, but to expand the room around them. Architects, good ones anyway, understand scale. A massive fireplace in a room with 20' high walls. A clock as tall as a man, a narrow hallway or a short ceiling... they all have their way of making you see in a new way, or feel something.

It's a spiritual discipline, I think. Scale isn't about eliminating what we are not happy with, but holding that thing next to something known. I'm trying to know (again) a bigger picture.

Who knows why, maybe the jolt of nearly dying or the troubles of so many things I'd be better off not knowing... but the world got really small suddenly. The troubles, by comparison, too big. Stepping into that room with the 20' high walls sort of takes your breath away, and then gives it back again.

Last week I took Mei An fishing. It is a well known lake around here with big fat German brown trout and planted rainbows. We were one of two boats. She trolled for a while as I rowed the dingy around. Not much action, but I knew we'd see some fish as the sun got lower. Sure enough, Mei An got bored and I took the flyrod out and began casting a bug that looked like something that had just landed on her arm.

Teeny little world, the world of dry flies. Whissssshhhh whisssshhh. The line whipped back and forth. The fly landing like a piece of lint on our floor. Lightly. And as I looked up over the tip of my rod, there was scale. The 50 yard stretch of glass water ending at two boulders... and just above it, a black bear. He was not huge, a juvenile, but he rippled with strength as he moved up onto the rocks and down to lap at the lake.

Mei An and I watched his every move. We missed several bites on the now drowned fly. Then the bruin ambled up toward a cabin, presumably to root through the garbage, an easier meal than shoreline fish.

We did catch a couple fish, eventually. The ospreys caught a lot more, and dragged their trophies over our heads by only 15 feet or so. Showoffs! But that too was a bigger picture than anything that worries me throughout the day. Scale for sure.

When we got home, the fish were a sub-story for Mei An. It was all about the bear. At the edge of a glassy lake with the whisssshh whissssssh of fly line and ospreys kaplunking into the shallows and yelling, (or was it laughing) at us.

More than once that evening I lost, and then got back, my breath.

Same water, different day.

The hill going down to the creek is a lot like the rest of my life right now. Debris from the logging operation several years ago and the brush clearing last year makes it hard to walk. Between the shredded wood and baseball sized rocks that are common around here from the 1849 miner's tailings, it was the typically difficult walk to Wolf Creek. With short money from not enough freelance jobs and delays in payments from my key client, along with the entropy of my house and property... the walk to Wolf Creek proved an eerie parallel.

Since nothing has been done for a year, the blackberry brambles and buckbush have worked overtime to fill in the empty space opened up by the brush hog. It is over 100 degrees today too, with some humidity, and so the thought of a 1pm project doesn't really make sense. Unless your options are limited and the boil inside is hotter than it is outside. And that's how it was for me today. I needed the catharsis of beating the ground to a pulp.

The hollow where Wolf Creek lies is always a little cooler than the top of the hill where the house bakes in the exposed south sun. The paint on the house is cracked and the siding warped where I know there is more dry rot. So many projects to be done there, all of them costing money, and I cannot lift a finger to spend one more dime on it. So, to the creek I went with manual tools. A weed whacker, hard rake, shovel, machete and a bottle of water. The kids accompanied me, but didn't last, the heat is wilting, and Dusty was sick two days ago with the flu. He was feeling weak. So it was really me against the weeds.

I hacked and dug, pulled and thrashed until I could hardly stand. Completely covered in sweat, my body was a web of tributaries. It was hot enough to do what I have not considered for a long time. Not since three years, seven months ago. The last time I was in that creek, I was unconscious facing upward as my wife begged me to move my legs to help her help me out of the water. That was January, 2006.

I looked at the dog swimming in the creek, Devon wading in it with Mei An and Tynan. Anxiety was the emotion I felt. They all got out and went up to the house, so I kept clearing the area on the bank of the water. My body was crying to sit down. My mind was filled with a combination of rage and sorrow. So I kept cutting the chest high grasses and brambles.

My grip was weakened by exhaustion though and when I drew back with the machete, it launched... into the creek.

I tried to scrape it out with the shovel to no avail. I thought about calling Devon back to go in, but I doubt he could hear me with the windows shut up to keep the air conditioned house cool.

So there was only one thing to do. I went in. The water was cold. The perfect antidote to the hot air. But I got out as soon as I found the machete. Then a little later, after finding it hard to do anything more, I waded in and fell forward under the water. I pulled a few strokes and thought how ironic it was that I was even here to be refreshed by this same creek. I got out and had Devon, who had returned to see what progress I'd made, take the picture here.

I'm still anxious as hell, but at least I am still here to feel it.

Sinking sand

There's a thing that happens there by the water's edge on most ocean beaches. I can't remember the name of the scientific theory or law that describes it. As a kid I thought of it as "quicksand", though when I think about it, of course, I realize it is far from quick.

The wave spreads itself thin as it ends its journey and the water it carried seeps down through the grains of sand. As it does, the sand pulls apart and anything with weight begins to sink down too. There's something soothing about sinking. There's something, especially as a child before I knew there was a limit just there about where my knees are, where the sinking stops, that is a little fearsome also about sinking.

But sinking it is. As I sink today, I'm trying not to move. It's the moving that makes the sinking more rapid. So I'm standing alone now. There were others once, but now I'm looking at the sun setting, feeling the coolness of night, and the water and sand around my calves, the sticky suction feeling of trying to pull up one leg then the next... but I think for now, for as long as it takes, I'll stand here motionless. And let the water wash over me, and hope that there is a limit, that place where I'll stop this slow descent into the sand. 

It's not quick, thankfully, but I always wonder how long it might take if I keep moving, to go as far as my hips, my waist or my chest, or further. For now, stillness it is. Calming water and wet sand and sinking... and the faint memory of the others.

Small town hospital

Our hospital, here in Grass Valley, is far from those incredibly high tech buildings you see on TV or come across by way of acquaintances who have special procedures or surgeries, usually considered as "trial" solutions.

We're in a small town. So just like going to the bank or the fair, or the grocery store, the hospital becomes one of those places where you bump into people. Some are friends come to visit. Others are the doctors or nurses. And every once in a while, you side up to another patient who has an impact on you.

My recent visit to the hospital, three weeks ago made for interesting contact of all three types. The one that surprised me most was the emergency room nurse who was moved to my floor to one day due to unusual activity up there.

I was lousy with dilauded, the pain medication that always seems to work for me, when this woman appeared in my line of sight... "My name's Holly, I'll be your nurse for a bit..." That's the standard greeting, I've learned, at the shift change.

I had been seeing things for days. Blue spiders on the doctor's collar, lots of post-it notes and yellow legal papers stuck upside down with handwriting in red ink. No matter how I tried, the visions would fade before I could read what was written. I saw shapes and faces in the clouds. Some of what I saw has been recounted to me and I can hardly believe the stories are true.

Some odd clarity of thought passed the instant I saw her face and heard the name "Holly".

About a year ago, we began looking for office space in Auburn for Freepath. In trolling for office furniture, Kathy came across a wonderful conference table on Craig's List. We bought it and I took part in delivering the check and transporting it from the seller in Grass Valley to the new office digs.

The woman who was selling it, as it turns out, was Holly. I remember telling her about my trauma and stay at Sutter-Roseville after she told me she was an emergency room nurse.

My eyes popped open and my slurred speech asked, "what is your name?" When she told me again, I said that I knew her. Which of course she began to deny, they hear lots of misinformation from drugged patients. I said, "No, really, I bought a really cool table from you..."

Melinda said that throughout her whole shift, Holly was constantly monitoring every nuance of my condition. Something that Dr. Bosco had done in January of 06. It was (and is) a special connection. I can't wait to feel well enough to go visit her and thank her, as has become my custom with those who dedicate their lives to caring for the rest of us.

I was sharing a room by the second or third night. They wheeled my roommate to be into the room. His leg bandaged up, I asked him what happened. What I heard him say was, "Honey bees".

Melinda was sitting there, and when I asked if that was common she hunched that I was not entirely with the conversation. He replied that in extreme cases this can happen. I then asked, "are you a bee keeper?"

"What?" he asked.

"Wait", I said, "Did you say honeybees?"

He rolled his eyes and said, "No, I said diabetes... they had to amputate my foot."

That was the last we spoke that night. Until about 4am when we were both stirring and I started to ask him questions about how he felt about not having a foot. We talked about life and death and God and my accident and our common near-death experiences (both of us actually considered our stories to be death experiences). In the end, it was a deeper connection than I could imagine after asking the stupid question the day before. I'm sure he doesn't remember through his medicated blur that either I asked or anyone did, about honeybees. Just as well.

One of these days I'm sure I'll see him again. It's how it is here. What was a chance encounter will be an unspoken connection. I won't be surprised, in fact I sort of look forward to it. He was convinced that his diabetes will take his other foot in the next several years. Perhaps it will be the smallness of this community that will not only sustain these kinds of relationships, but will be make us what we are meant to be as we go from near-death to the rest of that journey. I don't think it will be a lonely road, just one with some of the surprises we had not experienced.

Red Wine

Once I sat on a deck and drank wine, a toast to a friend.

Then, before I knew it, one weather was gone

And another weather upon me.

The waiting for spring and warmth and kissing warm lips

After the toast

That's what I see with my eyes closed.

Photopoaching

It's a funny thing. People like having their picture taken, in general. I like it so much that I'll go to great lengths to "poach" a photo. My kids used to be embarrassed by it, but now they are poachers too.

Some great places to poach are vacation spots, graduations, weddings, birthdays, (family holidays, as seen in the photo here with Tynan), tour stops (especially those frequented by Japanese tourists who like to pose in front of stuff for a photo.)

Thanksgiving 2008.
Tynan thinks he's all
alone at the table. I got
into a string of about
5 shots in a row here.

We went to Disneyland in October. What a great place to poach. I'm in the background of probably 50 photos that went home to wherever and are now on social network profiles around the world. The ultimate poach is where you can sneak a goofy face into the image at just the right moment.

The idea is simple really. When you see a person or a group forming up for a photo op, you merely saunter over behind them as though you're looking at the sights from an angle just behind them. Act as though they aren't even there. You are, after all in the usual poach, in public. You'll see the photographer lining up the shot. The psychology here is that you are for all intents and purposes, invisible. The subjects are preening and the photographer is looking to see if everyone is smiling. Make sure you can see the lens from where you stand. Often you'll hear, "Ok, everybody Onnnnneeeee Twoooooo Threeeee SMILE!" That's when you turn quickly toward the lens, make your wildest face ever (maybe even step up to the back row so it's like you're one of the family) and as quickly as you can after the "click" return to sauntering.

Now you will appear in the photo. When they get home and upload the family picture to Facebook, everyone goes, "who's that???"

There's also the direct photopoach. Someone asks you to take a picture of their group. Hold the camera up ... backwards ... and act like you're looking for the viewfinder, then...... "CLICK" you're on their camera, full face. As seen here:

The poach during Dusty's
Birthday party. The group
shot was next. Lou: "OK,
so I just push this button?"
           "click"

Or, of course a great photopoacher is promoted to black belt if you can pull off the ultimate. A lone camera, left trustingly on the campground table. Pick it up, snap off a few and set it back down as though nothing happened. You'll be congratulated (or chastised) later for your brilliance. Observe:

My Black Belt photo.
Camping at Lake Tahoe,
This camera was left
on the picnic table.

What I don't have an example of just yet, is a picture some stranger took where I'm just there in the background. I haven't even mentioned the kind of poach that is the "forced friend" poach. I'm sure somewhere out there on the net, I appear in one of those images that the Japanese tourist didn't delete. I see a person posing, and run up to their side to pose along with them as though we've been hanging out all day. After the "click" I just walk away as though nothing ever happened. If you're cruising along the internet and you see me in some inexplanable image, dear reader, please shoot me the link. It's the one thing that would move me from Black Belt to "Exalted Master".

There is great fun to be had in the grocery store, and one of these days I'll write up the game my roommates and I invented in Spokane (Whitworth College!) for getting through the long, cold, dull winters...

A small "wrinkle"...

When Tess, the dog, left us this week, she made a small mess of our hearts. We woke up to her absence that morning. We just didn't think she would be in transition between two places.

Tesseract Lightfoot. "Tesseract" from Madeline L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time, and "Lightfoot" from the book Cold Sassy Tree. The Wrinkle is what a Tesseract is, where two pieces of time fold in on each other and at that fold, time travel happens.

That's how it is with dogs, I've decided. They connect us, in a small way, to what's important. Companionship, and relationships, loyalty, all the things that a good dog, in a small way, will provide.

Lightfoot was the young girl in Cold Sassy Tree who, though desired, couldn't be known... The boy, from whose eyes the story was told, fell in love with her and yet she couldn't be his, due to his shyness and the cultural inacceptance of her station compared to his.

Danny Blaise named Tess. We wanted names from books, and these were two faves 12 years ago. I don't think I had any idea that the dog we named after a Tesseract would lay on the shore of Wolf Creek as Melinda ran for help after my accident. My own tesseract of sorts, the wrinkle where two times touched. It was a bit ironic, carrying her up the hill from where she lay unable to move last Friday. I was very out of breath when I got her up the hill, my breath a fog in the cold morning air. She had apparently spent the night there.

So in my way, I paid her back for being near me in my duress. There it was again though. The small thing a dog showed me about what to do when a friend falls. You sit by them and don't say anything. Many people did that for me in the hospital. Now I know what it is to really visit someone. Just be. There.

Love is all about loss. I'll never get used to it. Maybe in some small way, it gets easier as time goes on. I don't know, I'm only 50. Lots of time down the road, you just never know what you might wake up to some day. Which is a good thing, after all. Where would hope be with too much knowledge?

From a place far away...

Back when I traveled internationally a lot, there were times of feeling isolated. Of course this is all gone now for travelers who can stay in touch through the wonders of internet destinations such as Facebook, email clients, Instant Messaging, and of course Phone/VOIP. 

In fact I remember the last trip out of country for me was to Africa in 2004. I was on a cell call to home from the back of a jeep as we charged along a Tanzanian dirt road, taping a herd of something antelope-like. On the other end, they could even hear the mechanical clanging that comes from potholes and ruts of the road over the sound of my voice. This was an interesting bookend to my very first trip out of country in 1992, also to Africa, when I made one pricey phone call in two weeks from a hotel in Nairobi. 

But even with the technical wonders available to us, we can still feel isolated. Sometimes by choice, other times because it's not always easy to discern meaning from pixels on the screen. The real person within my proximity is company of some kind. The one occupying the screen or phone line as a voice, is imagined or remembered. But there is still something intimate about absence.

The letters and words next to each other are an interesting visual. Even each letter as we look up close is a combination of lines (sequenced pixels) and space. If we are to make meaning out of our words, we have to see both the presence and absence of those lines. And looking that closely, I realize even in the printed word, on screen, text on a phone, or on paper, there is more white space than "ink". 

Lately I've been trying to remind myself that this is what grace is. Immature Christians like to think of grace as a hard set of boundaries that we have to practice writing over and over. Of course, this leads to many a slippery slopes. With that kind of Rigid Grace, what can you say about "Judgement", (capital "J") or Mercy, or even Love? Really anything that marks a thought as "Christian" or not hinges on grace. 

The places far away from the pixels are important in discerning the boundaries. Sometimes we Christians are forced to ask ourselves and others, "what is God's Will in this case..." If you flip the view of grace to be more white space than finite lines, you are in what feels like very unsafe territory. Territory that is a place far away. And like those places far away in my past, I cannot easily, nor affordably, get back to the finite. God's Grace. Here, look at it this way:

G    R     A    C    E

Look at all the white space. The closer you get to it, you are farther away from the pixels, the lines or the ink that supposedly defines "grace". The older I get, the more comforting it is to me that God is in that space far away from what we have tried to define as "grace". 

Because of the space, I should never put myself in the place of Judge, (capital "J"). That's God's place. Because of it, I should know when to be merciful. The answer, I think to that is, "always be merciful". Because of the space, I know that God has lots of flexibility as to how He might interpret our intents and actions. Especially since those things are only symptoms of our real illness, creation in rebellion with creator. 

The deception is when I no longer am looking at the "page" with the word Grace written upon it. In other words, if everything is "white space", then anything goes. Without the Word, there is nothing to lean against, nothing to pursue but our own cravings. No word and the person has to ask, "farther away from what?" We, rebellious creation, begin scribbling indiscernibly on the page. 

We are scribbling when we justify our ideas on the page before or after Grace. 

One more step into the abstract and I'll publish and move on. 

God's Will and the Importance of Grace.

So you want to know God's Will? Try to know your own will first. I mean, really KNOW it. What is it in you that is will in the first place? Is it intent? Is it actions? Not really, no. In death, to "will" is to grant. In marriage it is a promise that stands next to "I Do". 

Do you take...? Next to Will you honor...? In Anglican baptism, "will you renounce satan...?" The Book of Common Prayer provides the script: "I will with God's help". To will is to grant. To will is to promise. At least in this shallow end of the Pool of Semantics.

If you end there, you might say, "I know Lou's will." Even though my will is my business. You might set me as an example and try to act according to my will (I wouldn't suggest that, for what it's worth). Maybe will is nothing without choice. 

Maybe even God has a choice to grant according to his promises or not. Does not God promise to be trustworthy? Doesn't He, through Christ say, "follow me"? Is not God the only being with the responsibility and rights to judge the hearts and minds of all people? In so doing He grants eternity of some kind, like it or not. Maybe, if I want to know God's will, I should look at His gifts and promises. Some fulfilled, some outstanding.

God's will, His business after all, is I think knowable. He has a will of Justice. And a will of compassion and mercy and so on. They are marvelously synchronous, not at all contradictory, but it is disconcerting to we who think we have to understand everything before we'll act, whether our relatively insignificant events are caused by God's choice to act on which part of His will... We all choose to act on our wills or against them. The chief difference, I'm convinced, is that God can be trusted to always act according to His. 

Word Gardeners

This whole thing about communicating is overrated. Life was good once, when there were publishers and editors who knew what they were doing. The days of books, and newspapers and trained language professionals who care about punctuation, grammar and tenses, those were the days. 

Those days aren't completely gone by any stretch, but they are muddied by the vast amount of permission we've given each other to think ourselves worthy of thought and justified in our opinions. We are, all of us who write anything as permanent as a blog, present webspace included, guilty of taking permission but not always with the responsibility that goes with it. In part it's because there's been a narrowing between the parallel roads of "immediacy" and "permanence". 

Breaking the wall for the moment (which is, after all permitted since this IS my blog, whatever "my" means), I find myself suddenly on a quest to take more lightly ideas expressed casually.

I am keenly aware of what happens when I read something written in haste for whatever reason. "Haste" is the word of the day in this instant publishing of blogs, IM's, SMS, Tweets and other microblogs. So why the hurry? Sometimes it's the post-it note mentality driven by easy to use technology. What used to be a quick reminder to self, stuck on the cupboard, is now publicly viewable, and has impact on those around us. Sometimes hasty words happen because we don't have the margin to think, so we process out loud. And of course, as witnessed a while back when I saw two teenage girls texting each other at a movie from opposite ends of the row, we shoot hasty words sometimes because we "can".

In the end what keeps coming back to me is that there's one element in all this that is the most human of all. Trust. I feel comfortable with someone seeing an "impermanent" idea of mine, because if they are my reader, they're trustworthy. I am bolstered by the myth that what I might say in an electronic transfer, will be taken with a grain of salt, because we all know there was no "editor" or "publisher" involved. It was a casual comment. Or was it?

I'm more aware than ever that nothing I write is really impermanent. Not any more or less than harsh or kind words I speak. I can change a person with what I say to her. I can make him do the impossible, or create for her an impossible self image with simple conversation. And even more so, through "inked" words. The reader goes back over and over the text and, for better or worse, feasts on the meaning. Permanence. They are changed and so nothing said or written casually is truly fleeting. (With the exception of the likes of a shopping list or party greeting: "hey", "how's it going?", etc)

And so I'm trying to weed out those idiotic tendencies from my garden. It's the editors and publishers I miss most. Those professionals, the ones who know gardens, who can take one look and say, "you know, a little fertilizer on those over there, and if I were you, I'd prune in the next week..." Until then, may I learn at least to know what's important enough to explore, and what is best left stuck to the cupboard door.

Do not be afraid, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name, you are mine.
Should you pass through the sea,
I will be there with you;
or through rivers, they will not swallow you up.
Should you walk through fire, you will not be scorched
and the flames will not burn you
You are precious in my eyes, I love you
Do not be afraid, for I am with you.
Book of Isaiah

The rain was heavy today. That's not to say it was heavy rainfall. It was heavy, as though the drops had been eating and not exercising, laying around on their couches for months watching football and drinking beer when there comes a knock on the door and they get up, grumbling and a little annoyed as they try to button their pants. The knocking gets more persistent. "Alright, alright," the fat droplets say, "hang on..." When they finally reach the door, the bell is now ringing and there's a shouting outside, an unfamiliar voice yelling, "EVERYBODY OUT!" while the lazy, plump plops shove a handful of chips in their pouty mouths and reach for the door...

That's the kind of drops that were falling today as we walked in the forest an hour's drive from our house into the Sierras. Those same drops, seconds after turning the knob were demanded out of their slums, falling helplessly alongside millions of others who had, apparently, enjoyed the same easy living until the knocking became unbearable. Heavy drops. My whole body became full of them, and heavier were my steps because of them.

The rain can do that to you. It can expose darkness and light. Some rain is silky and refines your joy. Todays rain was heavy and cold. Walking the forest road, spilled and pooled, puddles more like a loch with hidden dread, the water's weight in my coat, seeping to my skin called heaviness from my heart. It knocked incessantly and rousted me from the comfort of my own forgetfulness. That's fat rain if you're not being careful. 

This trail will be ten feet under snow in a few weeks. That first white sheet will start blur the lines between the large rocks that cobble the road. I won't be there. But if I was, perhaps that snow, pulled flake by flake from the clouds would be the peace that comes from the averaging that only deep snow can provide. Rain brings out your darkness or light. Snow is relief from pain and the silencing of critical voices and regrets. 

Summer Flu

A running nose in hunderd degree heat

Sweating and crawling, my skin is alien flesh

Plugged ears when the elevation shifts five feet or more

And the queasy growling under my naval

It's the summer flu

What did I eat?

Who do I know that can't get out of bed?

Who did I kiss?

What will I do as I toss in perspiration sheets?

These are the the mysteries of the summer flu

There's only one thing

To lay prone

And another thing, drink fluids

Starve your fever, or is it, feed it?

Every problem in the world 

Is in your body, unavoidable

In the summer flu

Nobody else cares, until you give it to them

Nobody remembers except to say, "ew, stand over there",

What it was like the last time

Their body contained every worldly problem

But they can't escape it, the hot, clingy, sticky, crawly 

Virus of the summer flu

Five minutes, an hour, then two

Half a day, then night, and still here

Still floating up and over into the night

And morning, it should be gone

Sniffling stuffed up sinus-jammed breathing

Or not

It's all over when you cough and rattle

The bass note serenade of the summer flu

--that's what it has been like these past three days. It occurred to me that I've only had one or two summer flu's. They are worse than the usual mid-winter bug in that they seem to be more reckless. Germs with bermuda shorts and hibachi's on vacation in my blood stream. Can't wait for them to pack up and go home. Perhaps this is what Oregonians think of us here in California as we invade during the mosquito months. I wonder...

The Stare-down

When the two faces met in the mirror, the one looking the other seen, there was a sudden recognition that something was missing. A longing for the way it used to be, not yesterday, nor last week or even anytime in the past year or two. But the longing was for anything unchanged in the mirror.

He looked at his face,  at the age spot just under his eye... the faint lines on his nose, the "smile wrinkles" around his eyes and gray hairs in his two day unshaven beard. These were all new, since the last time he really looked. That time, as best he could remember, was sometime in his early twenties. 

Then he looked in. Past the age spot, into the frame that was the wrinkles above his cheekbones, to the brown color and pupil floating on the white of his eyes. He ignored, for a moment, everything around them, and said to himself, "There. That's what's left of me. That's what has changed the least." Even though it wasn't true, for his ability to see close up and far away simultaneously is not what it was back then. Only the outward appearance of his vision was the same, and only that in the very center. 

He couldn't stay long, the seen was getting bored with being observed. So, he stepped back, satisfied for the moment that there was at least one thing left of him that quelled the longing for what used to be. It was not youthfulness, but innocence that escaped him this morning. And even that was not very easily seen. 

On his way to work, he counted the things that swept him away from his younger self. Each one, in itself, a complete story of its own. The sum of them, totaled together, was cause for grief and joy both. Each story, person, or event that eroded his innocence carried those two faces of their own. 

Each looked into the mirror at the other, one seeing, the other seen. Grief observed joy. They traded places. Joy looked grief deeply in the eye, past all the markings of a worrisome unforgiveness. And backed away slowly, for the moment, satisfied, and said, "There. That's what's left of me. That's what's changed the least..."

The weeping bride and her gentleman.

I guess I'm finally getting used to having a married son. Like I'm finally getting used to the idea that my hair is really receding. Blaise married Lindsey back there on the 28th. Of June. A hot day, sweltering actually, in the little church where they were wed. Our church. "My" church. I guess it's Blaise's home church, but not his church. He's living out of town, he and Lindsey are, in Pacific Grove. (Monterey, for those of us who don't always remember where "PG" is.) And so their church is the Anglican church there, (Anglican, because we all hate saying "Episcopalian"). 

They, and my receding hair, are becoming more obvious all the time by their absence. Lindsey cried hard the first night in their apartment, according to Blaise. Who could blame her. A blast through all the wedding arrangements, the emotions of having inbound families and expectations, then the ceremony and reception and the getaway to wedding night... The honeymoon and a quick stop to unwrap a couple hundred presents, all shiny and new and somehow up to now unnecessary, then the fourth of July with my family and finally the crossing of the threshold. As Blaise says, the kitchen was less than tidy when he left it to off and wed. 

So she cried. Hard. But my dear boy did maybe the first brilliant married man thing of hopefully thousands in the future. He made her dinner. And they watched a movie.

She was feeling homesick up to then. And this new thing, this was not feeling like home. But Blaise made it so. Dinner, lovingly made. Served up to his beloved. Followed by a cuddle on the couch through a 90 minute (+-) story, somebody else's story for the first time in weeks, perhaps. He fixed Lindsey up. 

And that's all you can ask at a time like that, isn't it? Exhaustion, change, stress, family, and loss after loss. Nothing like home, even one that you're growing into, when the smells of garlic and olive oil (or whatever he cooked that night) are all around you.

May God bless them through their love for each other, as they bring each other home, over and over. Which is just another way of saying, "better or for worse..." 

More... or Less... Lost

There's a place along the spectrum of lost and found 

Where I sit with my legs dangling over

It's breezy up here, and the spectrum, like all spectrums

Is not a very comfortable ledge

It's not meant for sittng

You're not supposed to dawdle

You're supposed to keep moving along the line

But I've just gotten tired of being more or less lost

So I've sat down to dangle my legs

It is, after all, my spectrum

I guess you just die one day and they'll say things about you

Things like, "Lately he'd been a little out of sorts." 

Another way of saying "more lost than usual"

Or things like, "He went around making people smile..." 

Another way of saying "more found than usual"

The measurable degrees of lost

Sitting on one of them now, with my heels sweeping the abyss

We could just move the end called "Found" over here

But I'd know better, like setting the clock ahead 15 minutes to avoid tardiness

More lost today I think, certainly more than two days ago

I can barely remember my own name

The numbing cold of the lost has set in

I know I should stand and walk to where the found are mingling

I can hear their laughter, sometimes pink, sometimes blue

And always a long ways off

"I was just there", I think to myself

"Where the found are sipping mango tea or Dr. Pepper"

Going means leaving something back

Becoming less lost is always such a hard bargain

Here in the cold, it's only the impostors who sit and stay too long

And such quiet company, the lull of the distance, the cold breeze

I'm now one of them, a long way from the oppressive freedom of having been found

Truly found

Where your heart beats on the outside of your chest

How I miss that weightlessness 

And stripping down to the skin

What am I doing with these fools here in the cold?

Today... just hanging my heels somewhere, more... or less... Lost.

Catch and release raccoons

A while back, my friend John and I devised a new concept in politically correct hunting lodges. Catch and release deer hunting. The whole premise wound around the idea of paintball guns and pesky deer. You can imagine, I'm sure, the rest.

Two nights ago, our back screen door into the big common room the kids fondly call the "playroom" was open and the raccoons slipped in unnoticed and made a very noticeable mess out of the cat food bag.  (we hardly use the cat food since our OUTDOOR cat became fond of the neighbors who now let the thing in the house when it's raining and pamper it with canned tuna. When they go on vacation they always come over to remind us about the cat saying, "could you remember to feed Rama?" Pffft. The mouse population is sure to rise.)

Well last night as Melinda was designing some banners for Blaise and Lindsey's wedding reception, I heard a scratch at the front door. I thought it was our prodigal cat. So I went to look. The stinking raccoons were tired of waiting to be fed, and, "heck" they figured, "last time one of those big flat things was there we just pushed and there was a bag of cat food."

So I got Dusty's paintball gun and, in my shorts, sprinkled cat food on the driveway, and hid out. I also changed my status on Facebook to read, "Lou is hunting raccoons with a paintball gun".

Brenda who, with Jeff went to get Chaney in Italy, uses Facebook to brag about all the great food and historical stuff their seeing, read my post and couldn't help but post there. It went likd this:

Hunting raccoons, with a paintball gun nonetheless....now that's fun! Any luck?"

To which I responded: 

"The damn things have thrashed the catfood, the garbage and last night they were scratching at my front door, like the cat does. I go out there to see what it is... a raccoon!. So. I got Dusty's paintball gun and sat in the shadows on the deck with a spread of catfood on the driveway... nothing, until this morning when I found the catfood gone and a note asking for fish. It was taped to a poloroid of me hunched behind the barbecue.

I need to be more proactive I think. The door scared them away."

And Brenda again:

"Florence is great! ...  Chaney got all teary when she saw the Pieta by Mike. She had been studying this piece and school and was thoroughly flabbergasted seeing it up close and personnel."

Just goes to show you that as cool as catch and release raccoon hunting might be, there's always some friend in Europe with a better story. It seems a long ways away, the romance of hand carved marble and frescos, not to mention outdoor cafes and gelato. Soon enough though, my friend, with whom I sat for hours las fall waiting for a turkey to present himself as a fat target, will be home. He'll probably be carrying some extra weight from all the fresh pasta, which is a perfect alibi for hiding on the porch with glow in the dark spheres and CO2 tanks... 

Atheism: Cave Canum

Dusty applauded an April post by an atheist blogger he's become, apparently, enamored with. The antetheos posted about being open minded. You can see it here:

I don't want to lose my response to what I think might be a bit of under-thought on the part of the blogger, so I'm inserting it here for safe keeping:

"Beware of Dog"

Being rather new to this idea of "no theos", please forgive me if I ask questions that have been unquestionably accepted by rational thinkers, or well enough documented in this or other blogs. You, I think would agree that public opinion is among the least of the proofs. You've said as much in refusing, as we all should do, to accept opinion or another's word as complete, or whole evidence. So I thank you for the freedom to consider your opinion here as same weight as Billy Nascar, St. Augustine or a midlevel potato farmer. I'm happy to say, we all of us dead or alive, have produced moments of brilliance.

Am I right to draw from this post, that open mindedness is an important value to which I, as an atheist must cling? You have several themes running through, but it might me help to stick to only one, for "I am a bear of very little brain."

Tell me if I have the gist of your view right: An open mind is a desirable thing. A closed mind to be avoided. So far, so good. I'm strongly considering atheism already, open-mindedness is the only way to fly if we're to give and take, fully, in these short years incorpus.

Thank you again, for leading us by your example. I think I can trust you to give me the best atheism has to offer. So, by your post, a good atheist "should" agree that evidence must live up to several criteria, some pretty strict boundaries. Can you help me here? I was just about to join you, valuing open-mindedness as much as you do. But, these words seem a bit restrictive. Here they are again:

"convincing" "irrefutable" "logical" "consistent with the reality we know" "practical" "sensible" "possible" "rational"

I'm trying for as much common ground as I can get here. Let's imagine that a religious mystic describes his faith. You'll require "convincing, irrefutable logic". But when he starts, we atheists will have a problem with reality we all, including him, "know". His faith is "practical" to him and he would say "sensible" or why would he bet his lifestyle upon it. But if you're not convinced of his "proofs" because they don't meet your very specific "rationality", I'm afraid I might hear you declare "Impossible!!!"

So as one who is in total agreement with you on the importance of remaining open, my question is simply, "Is not this atheism, both narrow, and closed?" After all... your mission, if you'll allow, is wonderfully described in a single word. I wish I had a single word mission. That word: Atheist. "No Theism" as you say. Sounds a bit more rigid than you originally promoted above.

I greatly desire peer respect, in the end. After all, we both have our moments of brilliance. I fear we're starting off on the wrong foot. Could you clarify this one, what looks to me to be, blind spot? In this one post you've alienated those who can't meet your subjective, albeit narrow rules, and have devalued our beloved openness by your title which says "I'm closed to theism". If it were on a business card, I'd know your name and that you value closedness. Maybe we're expecting too much of an open mind. In that case let's search for some other common ground, something we can agree is valuable (even though To Value requires a faith in yet another thing we can't quite prove...)

Thanks in advance for your gentle response, I am but a potential disciple, with a deep lack of experience in such an obvious (as you put it) need for exclusively rational thinking.

All the best,

To the Anthropologists!

Here's a picture of me today, just for the record. Since this blog, any blog really, is a sort of time capsule that one day will be trod by very bored anthropologists, I thought I might make their life a little easier. To you future scientists, this is what it's like when you've moved out of your office here in the early 2000's, after a series of smallerizing events in a start up. 

Whatever you have there in the future, I hope it includes the same ability we have today to bounce back after personal economic ruin. In fact it is a poverty of luck. But as you can see, this placid day in Grass Valley, CA in May, there is no global warming, or cooling. Just global downsizing in my little world. I now work from the deck whenever possible. Soon it will be too hot again. Followed by too cold. Somewhere in there, all that really matters, is my whole work world fits in my backpack.

Hope this one little puzzle piece helps you to know how it was today, at least in this little wooded place. (FWIW, just across the canyon, I'm hearing large earth moving equipment. I think some rich bastard just bought the top of the hill over there and is carving a swath out of the forest so he can see the creek.) When you read this, out there 100 years from now, Google "Little Way" and see if you can see any trees. Probably just concrete across the creek.

Blessed are the Meek

Marcia Haley is one of my favorite people. She's angelic in some ways. Something happened to her when she was a young girl to slow her intellectual development. I don't know what it was, I've only known her for the past eight or ten years and so what was "lost" in that episode doesn't occur to me. All I know is that this sweet woman from a prominent family in our church never misses the opportunity to find me every Sunday morning for a hug and a kiss and to give Blaise and Dusty her best. She's often wearing an alb and is the most reliable acolyte or chalice bearer at the 10:30 service.

During the Gospel reading at Trinity, an acolyte will take the cross (a 6 foot tall pole with hand-carved cross at the top) to the center aisle somewhere around a third of the way back. When the cross passes at the processional or recessional and Gospel reading, it is customary to bow, indicating our own insignificance in the presence of the Christ resurrected.

Dusty's first morning as acolyte many years ago was unforgettable. He made it in carrying the cross just fine. It was at the Gospel reading when, as usual, he was followed to the center aisle by a chalice bearer carrying the Bible, and then the Deacon whose privilege it is to perform the reading. Only Dusty didn't stop a third of the way down the aisle. He, not able to see behind him, carried the cross all the way to the back of the church and out the door. The Bible and deacon stopped in the correct place. When Dusty finally turned around, Deacon Dave, a mountain of a man, smiled and gestured for him to come back. Dusty at his best.

Two years ago, many insignificant things started to loom large in the eyes my faith. I began to notice small nuances. And one of those was, and still is, Marcia.

I see her walking through town alone, from time to time. She walks because she cannot drive. I think she takes care of herself pretty well, doing her own shopping and preparing meals. I would guess her to be in her fifties now. We all know people like her. They don't fit very well into our view of "productive" society. We've placed such a high value on accomplishments and personal bests. By many standards, Marcia has little value. She has a quiet and simple sense of humor. I've never heard her argue the finer points of theology, but she did confess to me after my accident that she had prayed for me "all the time". I'd wager, those were prayers God was most happy to receive. In fact that first day back in church after six weeks in the trauma unit plus several more at home, is hard for me to remember. One thing that stands out is Marcia Haley hugging me over and over, and when she finally let go, I saw she was crying.

But the smallest thing is something I can't shake very well. It is when Marcia carries the cross. At the processional, when the cross leads her past me, I bow. At the Gospel reading, leading the Bible and the deacon, I bow again. And as the whole gang, acolytes, chalice bearers, deacon, lector, and finally priests make their way to the narthex, they are led by the cross, borne by Marcia Haley. Blink and you'll miss it. There are so many layers of meaning in it.

The least of these, redeemed by the most powerful reminder in the building, the Cross. She stands, made mighty, because of the cross. All around the room, as she walks by, important lawyers and businessmen, retired and visiting priests, intellectual giants and educated scholars... all of them, to the man and woman... bows. Marcia Haley, whom I see walking into town is merely Marcia Haley. But put the cross in her hands, and she is the most scandalously powerful person in the building. Of course nobody is bowing to her. Nor does anyone bow to the object, as if it were an idol. We are bowing to what is behind both. Sometimes I nearly gasp at the thought of it.

The very idea that this meek woman would hold such a precious thing. And why shouldn't she?! That's the point. We are, everyone of us, unworthy and castoffs without that cross. We bow to the idea of it...and paradoxically, at the same time, the reality of Christ. Why shouldn't we hold the idea of, and therefore the reality of each person as precious. And that picture, is the greatest image of Grace, like a living breathing icon, that I've ever known.

The angels have so often been portrayed as messengers. And there's that side of Marcia. The Sunday morning hug and her kiss on my cheek, her respectful "good morning Mr. Douros", and her almost shy departure at the end of it all makes me wonder why I don't bow when I see her on the street.

All of this has caused me to look around a lot more on Sunday mornings. There's meaning in almost every one of Christopher's gestures. Even individual cuts of stained glass in each panel can carry a whole biblical truth. Certain candles. The incense. Hundreds of details in each icon. The carefully chosen words of the Nicene Creed. (Even down to specific phrases). All of it layered full of meaning. At the end of a service I've taken away a single morsel that will feed my soul for weeks. That's where Marcia and I have so much in common. Those massive truths go on without us both. It's when we take hold of any one of them, and especially the cross, that our esteem goes beyond anything humanly measurable.