heroin

i think we create panic and feed on it. we want to fear, and there is a little masochist inside each of us that wants to feel pain. bored old ladies make up a different ailment every day so they can go to the hospital and break the routine. young mothers fake seizures on the way to the hospital for the same reason their young daughters fake being raped--significance. pity. attention. tragic posturing. importance.

basically the same reason, on a night like tonight, i'm tempted to binge in a little "i'm lonely in the big city" blogging, or perhaps some "my tragic history" indulgence, or mainline some "let me tell you about my childhood" misery. i didn't realize until putting on my uniform that Powers was planning on covering for me tonight so that I can take his Friday night shift and he can enjoy a night out with a beautiful lady. so sit here long enough and the ennui sets in and off runs the heart to the public pity medium to try to convert excess boredom into cheap significance via emotional gluttony. you aren't bored while in the sick throes of angst and over-worn-out personal tragedy.

huh. i'm a funny-lookin' person in the mirror.

so, Plan A down the drain, it's time to work on Plan B. I have decided that I am altogether too serious and dour. the Kingdom of Heaven is no place for the mopey/self-obsessed. it is an all-out party replete with wine, women, and song (and, hopefully, hibachis and steak...) and party poopers are frowned upon. I have discovered, to my dismay, a certain weakness in the celebration-side of life. Put me in a room with angst-ridden-sense-of-importance junkies and I will passionately be bitter about all the evil and bad isms that keep people frowning and shuffling along. But call up the dance and light the candles and pour out the alcohol of choice and I am stiff and looking for my bitter coffee. Declare a feast and I sit awkwardly and try to make polite conversation or introduce some subject that I can frown and feel important and sophisticated while discussing.

And there's Jesus over there whoopin' and hollerin' and making more wine when it's obvious everyone's had enough and pulling grouchy old Aunt Edna out on the dance floor for a cha-cha and I am at a loss for what to do because being important is not important while celebrating. rejoicing and laughing and playing games and other childlike traits--they are important.

So I need to get a lot better at celebration, which generally involves a deflated ego and a good bit of unsober gleefulness and laughter and--hah! Nickleback just started playing on my pretty little iPod. Case in point. Nickleback is a popular band that makes its living making sad-tough-guy music about how my girlfriend broke up with me and my family wasn't perfect and I'll never be allright and I'm angry and I'm sad and--dim shadows, empty whiskey bottles, browns and grays and dust always fading to black. Couldn't make a dancing tune to save their lives. God save us from seductive preprocessed canned some-one-else's-misery to titillate our carefully safe, carefully cultivated, carefully bored, carefully cool lives, and somehow empty selves. God save us from people who's favorite words (followed, of course with weighty and important sighs) are "God save us..."

Well. I'm going to try to find some way to redeem this evening that involves

a. laughter

b. absolutely nothing "serious", "important", "weighty", or "tragic."

c. unless the "tragic" could also be categorized under "schadenfreude".

d. because as the merriest of monks and ascetics knows, weightiness, dourness, seriousness and other forms of self-importance are bad.

e. and rejoicing is good.

p.s.--check out the hilarious Mormon guy's faux pas on Jeopardy

a little after the fact

yup. one more valentines day spent alone. or, in this case, working, with a decidedly unattractive male medic, so that Powers could go watch Cirque de Soleil from a corporate suite and hit on wealthy lawyers. oh well. Happy St. V's and to all good luck and good night!

goodbye vocabulary

so yesterday morning i couldn't sleep even though i knew i would pay for it later. so instead of sleeping the morning away in preparation for work, i curled up in my sleeping bag in my not-so-comfy comfy chair next to the big windows in my room and pulled back the curtains a little (the room is cold enough as it is) and drank cider and listened to Christmas music and watched the rain fall. i love rain, especially watching it fall as all the typically inconsiderate aspects of life tiptoe around selfconsciously because "ssssshhh--the rain is talking!" and I love Christmas music because it is, and i didn't get to listen to any at all except for a few snatches on the radio about how grandma's drunken stupor led her into the path of an inconsiderate grass-guzzling all-brawn no-finesse H3 of a reindeer.

except that it was actually yesterday afternoon, cause there i was trying to sleep days again and i screwed up my sleep schedule again so that now i want nothing more than to wake up around ten a.m. and go to sleep around three p.m.--the former being four hours into my off-time and the latter being just about when it's time to get up and get ready for work. but spending yesterday afternoon watching the-rain-fall-with-a-cup-of-hot-cider just doesn't quite cut the mustard. you're missing half of the great experience that i had, and i wouldn't want to rob you of that.

well. and now i'm sitting here wondering if i can type another five hours until bedtime, because i have to stay awake until about six or seven so that i can sleep and get up at six (that's a.m., as in the actual morning) for my eight to midnight overtime. yeah overtime. that should be me into bona fide overtime for this pay period, and then everything else extra that i tack on is time and a half!

and i used to get excited for christmas break. i warn you all: be ready for the ensuing gosh-darn-i-feel-old-what-do-they-teach-children-in-schools-these-days posts, because i'm sure i shall age all of my characteristic grace, and i seriously think my arthritis in my right hand is flaring up. booh-yah--anyone want to talk about the price of perscription drugs?



in other news, the "email me" is fixed. so you can email me now if you don't know my address. and i got to drive to Pennsylvania and back last night, lights and sirens the whole way! made a two-hour trip in an hour-fourty, in the pouring rain! yeah backroads! picked up a little newborn Am-let (that's little Amish lad) and drove him back, just as fast, and now he breathes a lot easier. hoo-ray for me!

things that must be said

upon a quick review, I have decided this is important for re-mention:

the process is cloudy, but Dr. Bradley Beach of Houghton College, originally on the tenure track, has been told he will not recieve tenure if he so applies. The college stands to lose a professor both popular among the student body and his fellow academics.

for reading:

see'>http://www.xanga.com/Houghton_Dialogue">see especially Dr. Benedict's statemtents--three cheers for Dr. B
the'>http://www.xanga.com/PopeCharming/391517743/item.html">the pope
save the Beach

lobby. please. lobby. emails and letters from alumni much appreciated. more later.

having not written in a while...

it behooves me to say that trips to Houghton can be rather strenuous. you'd be amazed to discover what wonderful things simply leaving can do for your popularity. but popularity aside, i must work, and work, and work, and work (and then pick up a little overtime) so i must off rather quickly. for your enjoyment, my little neice, who is well known in the marketplace for her vociferous "Shikomo"-ing of the elders. My neice is a little shiki-bird!















grand kudos and thanks to another dan for his kindness in making a Houghton visit possible by ferrying me back and forth from the land of my exile.

and, who are these wierd people? yeah, they would be my friends, wouldn't they?






more to follow, at another time. peace be with you all!

bouncing off Mr. Stowell...

[reflecting on Ethan's most recent post]

i think that love is an inevitable response to recognizing humanity in another person. when the static of our imperfect communication and communion is mercifully broken, for a rare moment, one person gains a momentary glimpse of the quite literally glorious, glory-filled truecreated eternal self of another.

what response can there be to such beauty but worship to god upon viewing the creator's art, and what response but horror and sorrow at every mar and wound laid upon than creation and every noisome wrack and noxious fume that obscures it from perception?

i follow the creed that love is first and most important, and all faith and morality follow. remembering the concealed glory bourne by every human individual, it's difficult to want to be one of the ones burning the library of Alexandria, chiselling the fingers off of Michaelangelo's "David" and spraypainting the Sistene Chapel. remembering each other's all-too-obscured and confused humanity becomes the hard work of love, and self-sacrifice an act of nurturing and restoring that which is truly important: the work of a master artist, the rebirth and life of dead souls.

maybe this is why Paul spoke of heaven as a place where none marry or are given in marriage: when the kingdom of heaven comes, and we no longer see through a glass darkly, maybe we will have no preference. the veils will be pulled back and the Sons and Daughters of God revealed in full glory, for which all creation holds its breath. each and every one of us will finally be able to see and hear each other's true self beyond the misunderstanding, pain and hatred that alienates us in this world.

we will love all of us with the depth of knowledge that blows away even the intimacy grown with eighty years married progress peeling away the loneliness and miscommunication of our present condition and drawing near to each other.

we will no longer need to continually remind ourselves of the hidden glory in our neighbors because we will be too busy drooling and reeling at the revealed beauty that was present and unfinished all along in tax collectors and good friends and annoying co-workers and great-aunt martha. and we will spend all eternity not being able to get enough of each other.

new toy

see, this is my new buddy--
and it goes pretty much everywhere with me.

but i need a little help.

first of all--it needs a name.

secondly--it needs music.

thirdly--it needs more pictures.

fourthly--it's got a crapload of options that i have no idea about. know something cool i can do with my ipod? tell me...

fifthly--it has absolutely no recorded messages/goofy greetings/amusing anecdotes from my friends to spice up the "shuffle" option.

donations enthusiastically accepted. especially pictures of you. because then i can carry them around with me, and if they're silly pictures, so much the better.

[where i have been lately - a pictoral journey]

grandpa's house for christmas


playing Pirates of the Barbary Coast, with my awesome little brother (who just scored a full-ride to MSU with free lodging tossed in to boot...)


florida


with these guys


a wedding with these guys (hey, that's And James!)


and working eighty hours last week

my excellent afternoon of fine reading, tucked away in my sleeping bag

i think perhaps that this book could be the most important book of the next twenty years. the only comparison i can make is with Jean-Jacques Rousseau's succint, conversational, and devastatingly intelligent Social Contract--but entirely different. Quinn is telling us what is painfully sinful, unhealthy, wrong, silly, deadly, or unsustainable--chose your adjective--about our way of life. and he is calling for change.

Despite all the indicators of misery we live with--the ever-growing incidence of social disintegration, drug addiction, crime, suicde, mental illness, child and spousal abuse and abandonement, racism, violence against women, and so on--most people in our culture are thoroughly convinced that our way of life smply cannot be bettered by any means whatsoever. Adopting anything different would therefore have to be a comedown, an act of sacrifce.

"Very typcally, when people question me about the future, they ask if I really believe people wll be willing to "give up" the wonderful things we have for the mere privlege of avoiding extinction. When I speak, as I did in Ishmael, of "another story to be in," they seem to imagine I'm touting a sort of miserable half-life of voluntary poverty, donning sackcloth and ashes to do penance for our environmental sins. They're sure that living in a sustainable way must be about "giving up" things. It doesn't occur to them that living in an UNsustainable way is also about giving up things, very precious things like security, hope, lightheartedness, and freedom from anxiety, fear and guilt."

"When in doubt, think about the circus. [the circus has been touted as an example of an non-hierarchical organization where people belong rather than work, and where all the members of the organization identify with and take personal responsiblity for the business.] People never run off to join the circus to give up something. They run off to the circus to get something."

--Daniel Quinn, The End of Civilization


which, oddly enough, is about spot on how i think about (i) monasticism, and (ii) redemption. what we give up, we do not really want. what we get--is worth giving up one's life for.

fullness

i feel there is too much going on for me to take in. literally. there are so many letters i feel a pressing need to write that i write none of them at all. there are so many phone calls to make and bloggy blogs to write and movies to watch and ideas to mull over and amazing books to read and bills to pay and tickets to settle and applications to write and decisions to make and...

and too much working my tookis off and fending off the restlessness long enough to put in the kind of hours that make money. i'll be sitting on top of an 80 hour work week saturday morning. three days off and i'll hit the grind again and probably start picking up overtime again...so the promised pictures and news are going to wait. my resolution to write a journal entry every day, inspired by the author of Snow Leopard, is going to wait. riding to the post office to get a stamp for that speeding ticket is going to wait. and everything else too. i need sleep. but at least i need sleep in a good way. good night...err...morning. something...

well...

i'm here-ish. in my new room. but fear not--it's the same address. i moved across the hall to my sweet new room: same rent, twice as big, two windows AND a door out to...a balcony! i'm (almost) moved in completely, so naturally it's a mess. but instead of vertical, cramped mess, i have horizontally slouching American suburban sprawl mess. and a walk-in, bang-your-head-on-the-pole closet. a place to put my boots!

and i'm off to work again--i've got to pay for those holiday adventures which have kept me hoppin'. pictures to follow.

i have little to say...

but if you're interested in someone who's positively just a pleasure to read, you should check out the Pope's latest. words worth reading just for the quality with which they were placed.


and for something completely different, a must for lovers of CS Lewis and 80's rap everywhere. thank you thankyou thankyouthankyou o thankyou sooooo much for making my morning Dan

belatedly as usual

Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas to all and everyone from the bean and the bear.

and, while quoting...

(and depriving myself of much-needed sleep)

from the Economist, 10/15, during what the British authors might call "that bloody Harriet Miers cock-up": (emphasis added)

There are few things quite as hypocritical as American politicians hurling accusations of cronyism. The Democrats are lambasting George Bush about his weakness for promoting people such as Michael Brown, the horseman turned emergency agency chief. But does anybod seriously believe that a Democratic president wouldn't appoint cronies of his or her own?...

"All countries have their cronies. That much-cited model of moral rectitude, Tony Blair, is so surrounded by them that they are called "Tony's Cronies" (he made his old roommate, Charlie Falconer, Lord Chancellor). Edith Cresson, a European commissioner, appointed her dentist to an advisory position. But you expect that sort of thing in Brussels. America's problem is the contrast between high-minded idealism and low practice.

"America regards itself as the world's purest mertiocracy--a country based on talent, not patronage and toadyism. A quick glace at history shows this is rubbish. Most presidents surround themselves with a regional mafia: look at Carter's Georgians or Reagan's Californians or Clinton's Arkansans. These mafias produce some rum appointments: Jimmy Carter made his one-time campaign driver, Jody Powell, his press secretary; Bill Clinton made his chum from Miss Marie's kindergarten in Hope, Thomas McLarty, his chief of staff. Scandals are endemic. harry Truman's missouri cronies had a weakness for gifts of mink coats and freezers (an issue in the 1952 election). As for the antics of Mr Clinton's Arkansas buddies, the less said the better.

"That does not mean every close ally is a "crony": that term inplies incompetence as well as promiximity. Condoleezza Rice is no Michael Brown, for example, just as Robert Reich was no Webb Hubbell...In deed, the trick of ruing a successful administration--as both FDR and JFK demonstrated--is to balance the competing claims of personal loyalty and individual merit. Mr Bush, as the candidate of the Republican establishment rather than a regional insurrection, brought in plenty of bruisers. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are guilty of many things, but being mere creatures of the president is not one of them.

"Still, if the presidential branch doesn't run on cronyism alone, it cannot run without it. A presidential campaign is a large gamble. Presidents acquire obligations to people who spend years toiling for them in the wilderness. Not all these people will be from the first division. Presidents also form a peculiar bond of trust with people who served in the campaign trenches with them. When they are in the White House, the only people they meet are supplicants. So naturally they turn to their old buddies for comfort and advice. Presidents need cronies just as cronies need patrons.

"From this perspective the real question about Mr Bush's appointment of Ms Miers is not whether it is cronyism, but whether he has stepped over the line that separates business-as-usual from offensive favoritism."

in more Timely cheer...

"This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country."

i'd never heard of Eugene McCarthy before last month. i'm starting to like him more and more. i think it's time to add him to my people-to-look-into-list, with a nod of appreciation to the Charmer with his penchant for intriguing conversations that first sparked my interest.

and, props to the Lao for recommending Time in the first place. yeah.

mad mad mega super (I [heart]) uber-props to Time

so here's to Time magazine's POTY: People of the Year. for those of you who need to dig your heads out of whatever it is that is so engrossing as to render you ignorant in the midst of a mass American trend toward awareness of and concern for global issues (aside--for instance, the people who put the Kashmir Quake on page 8B of the Buffalo News--end aside), Time's People of the Year award went to U2's Bono and Bill and Melinda Gates for their three-pronged assault on world health and poverty issues.

so, right next to yet another "I'm-Bono-can-you-hear-the-theme-music?-Strike-a-serious-thoughtful-pose!" slew of the ever-camera-aware (and ever-wearing-a-different-set-of-flamboyant-shades) U2 frontman's pictures are Bill and Melinda Gates. And (thank God for a break from Bono's studied meaningful glances, good for pushing AIDS initiatives AND selling iPods) Bill and Melinda have this wonderful expression on their faces, one I recognize from long experience with my homestay partner Mike.

It's the look of completely futile curiosity as the western mind tries to build bridges during catastrophic cross-cultural shifts: it pretty much played constantly on Mike's face (and, as I'm sure he can attest, rather dramatically on mine) as we grappled with inadequate language skills, exciteable interpreters, physical exhaustion, emotional bombardment, and massive non-parities. and, of course, poverty.

In retrospect, it's a charming look, and Mike's was probably a lot more composed and patient and less prone to vacant stares than mine. But I got to watch him, and not me, so he gets the bad press. At any rate, there's the capitalist megabillionnaire who has little badges that you can wear in his house so that the house knows where you are and where you are going and adjusts the lights accordingly, taking into account the time of day to soften or brighten things up and makes sure your selection of music follows you from room to room. And I've heard he has a "trampoline room..."

So there's Gates in a mudbrick house in India with that loopy look in his eyes, trying to figure out what the interpreter is saying and asking questions about land ownership and inheritance and local economic flows and governance peculiarities, scrunching his eyes together and trying to figure out what happens where and how those effects ripple through an entirely different, and much more lively third-world system. And Melinda's sitting beside him trying to explain with that patient look in her eyes, and their travelling slacks are wrinkled and they flew in just a few hours ago. on the private jet...

Go Bill. and props to Time for an issue half-devoted to some really excellent things that people, from billionnaires to Catholic priests to New Orleans scuba divers to Indonesia guys without last names, are doing in awful situations.

woooo-hooo-ful

yes! superfantastiche! i was hoping and hoping as i was reading that i would get tagged and i DID!

Yayyyy Conformity!

Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 weird habits of yours" and people who get tagged need to write an LJ/blog/xanga entry about their 5 quirky habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names.

okay.

one. i can't find my fingernail clippers--i haven't used them in a while. instead, i carefully tend to my fingernails so that they're all at various lengths, and one at a time half chew one off and floss with it. hey, i hate flossing, but i get bored, and it seems like the healthy thing to do. and if you're a backacker, you can save weight by not having to pack floss.

two. i try to learn curses in other languages at any opportunity. currently, i've got a smattering of Russian, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Mandarin Chinese (thankyou Firefly), Japanese, German, some quite vile Kiswahili, a burgeoning English collection (thankyou, coworkers), Farscape-ish, and my personal favorite, Ki-Musser (Good Lork!).

three. i sleep on a mat on the floor because i want to stay in hiking shape and not have to adjust to sleeping outdoors everytime i sleep outdoors.

four. i like hats. of the warm, fluffy, and flamboyant variety. i collect "gear," which is outdoorsman-ish for expensive toys for living as far away from permanent structures as possible.

five. when driving exceedingly fast in ambulances with the lights flashing and sirens blaring, i love turning up 103.3 The Edge and rockin' it out such tunes as "Into the Abyss Will I Run," "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," andything by System of a Down, and other assorted angry dark metal-ish music. an added bonus is flipping the siren between modes like a DJ to the tune of whatever it is that's in my head/i'm listening to. a few nights ago, around three a.m., we serenaded the fine people of the Apple District with "Jingle Bells" on the air horn. i think we freaked out some homeless guys...

OK. Now: dave lilley, dan perrine, mark lemke, dan reilley, chris moeller.

more bibliophilic musings

like the Seven Pillars of Islam (quiz: can you name all seven? in Arabic? i can't.), there exist the Nine Literary Pillars of Dan. except now it's Ten. without further ado, i give you one of the vital pieces of me:

Frederick Buechner's Speak What We Feel, Not What We Ought To Say.

yeah. it's about Chesterton, Shakespeare, Twain, and Hopkins. it's not cute, and sometimes it's harsh, but it is enduring and ultimately beautiful. it's one of those handy, necessary texts for navigating deep and unknown waters.

i have just one thing to say....

seriously, did you believe the title? c'mon here, it's me talking. let's start with the easy things to say:

so i have finally broken through the wall at work. my new paramedic (who i'll be picking up shifts with when i'm not on my normal schedule) took me out to the ol' Pink...a.k.a. what used to be the Pink Flamingo, and now is functionally nameless except for the wonderful moniker "the old Pink Flamingo."

this medic, who moonlights as a seasonal forest ranger in the 'Dacks and is the only person at work who doesn't think i'm crazy for riding around on my bike in this weather, figured immediately that the Pink was the place for me--it's sort of the last holdout, for people who dance, drink, mingle, or chill for no other reason than a sheer desire to enjoy themselves. it's tucked away nameless in Allentown, and anyone remotely resembling trendy would immediately generate laughs and be shooed out the door. o.k., the first word in the association game running through my head was "dive"...but i'm amending it ex post facto to "family dive", if "family" are the people who drink and laugh and cheer and are completely comfortable with each other's oddities. kind of the first bar i've ever seen with gay couples making out right next to straight ones, and nobody cares even to trumpet their own diversity because the entire place isn't about being impressive...it's about fun in the no-pretense zone. me and my new alpaca wool hat with the pigtailed earflaps fit in just fine.

the medic was right...it's my kind of place. which made me ever happier to turn around to the tap on my right shoulder into the grinning face of Greg Tedesco.

in any other bar, we would have made a scene, whooping and hollering and hugging and spinning around. in the Pink, it's like family Thanksgiving: same spirit, random people. a place of miracles. we hugged and laughed and looked at each other and hugged again. i guess a few Guinesses helped (did i mention they serve Guiness? how perfect can it be?) but it was pure, unadulterated heart-joy to see Greg almost three years after he left Houghton without contact information. we spent little time together there, but what we did is live together on opposite ends of 3rd Shen and always manage to brush our teeth at the same time most nights. sometimes we'd brush our teeth for an hour or two in that beautiful old 3rd Shen bathroom, Plato and Socrates in pajamas waving teethbrushes for effect. He had a voice and an experience that spoke of depth and exacting joy--the meticulous concern for the beautiful in life that marks the steps of a dancer and the pen of a poet. He had eyes that glowed and original, unborrowed dreams.

yeah. Greg Tedesco. in the only bar in Buffalo where three random people like us could all feel at home. i feel the movement of that unseen glorious mischief.

it only makes it better that it all followed a few good solid Guinesses and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. i could write on all night in praise--it's that good. in every way that the Lord of the Rings was something of a disappointment, a departure from the spirit of the original, Narnia the movie was spot on in the spirit of the greatest children's story ever. i really could go on for a long time, but it was beautiful, moving, joyous, British, innocent, childlike, and excellently done. and in sheer sheepish joy, i cannot get over the animals--i kept getting excited. people were teasing me, i got so pumped everytime i saw a new one. the unicorn, the satyrs, the leopards, the cheetahs, and i won't spoil the surprise on my favorites (the African animals!!!! oh the African animals!!!) and most glorious of all: the centaurs. i want to be a centaur now. wow.

and that's just the effects, the battle. the story itself is excellently well done. perhaps a little weak on really introducing and allowing you to love Aslan and understand his death--but that's for the better, i think, considering that Aslan as Christ-figure is only really understandable on screen to those who have read the books or who already have fallen in love with the Christ-story. the children are gorgeous--you want to adopt Lucy, and love her for her open-heartedness.

oh...and most important of all--they put in the mice! it's simply excellent. i'm going to go watch it again as soon as i can. i think it'll probably be better the second time around. that could be the Guiness talking, but i doubt it. by far, Narnia is an excellent, excellent movie for all who watch it. do yourself a favor--go sit in a movie theater and let your heart remember what it was like to be a child, to see the world with a child's eyes and imagination and spirit and now the thrill and fear and courage of a childlike soul.

ooh! a quick fix for ontological lightness!

take a moment to visit Houghton's mainpage and you will see, in the lower right corner of the main picture, the red hair, blue-clad back and lamentably uncelebrated buttocks (bluejean clad, fear not) of myself! [right under the "y" in community, if you still need help] you see, i know it's me because i remember when they carefully staged the picture :) funny, though, about that view from the back--they always seemed to want the pretty girls facing the camera and my back always ended up....

"the weight of this sad time we must obey/speak what we feel, not what we ought to say"

[excerpts from and thoughts after a recent Rolling Stone article on John Lennon]

[if you want to skip all the quotes and get to the thoughts, scroll to the next orange part]

"For years, starting before the end of the Beatles, Lennon and Ono had pursued a mdia-directed campaign for hte cause of peace--which at that time meant promoting an end to the war in Vietnam, though they were also advocating the larger philosophy of nonviolence that had guided India's Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. In March 1969, following their marriage in Gibraltar, Lennon and Ono flew to Amsterdam, where they staged a "bed-in" for peace. For seven days they sat in bed in their pajamas at the Amsterdam Hilton and gave hundreds of interviews, discussing their views that true peace begins as a personal pursuit and talking about intersections between activism, popular culture, ideology, and Eastern and Western religion...Lennon later said that he was trying to change his own heart as much as anybody else's. 'It's the most violent people who go for love and peace,' he told Playboy. 'But I sincerely believe in love and peace. I'm a violent man who has learned not to be violent and regrets his violence.' "


-


"Lennon also studied feminist history and theory. 'It's men who have come a long way from even contemplating the idea of equality. I am the one who has come a long way. I was the real pig. And it is a relief not to be a pig. The pressures of being a pig were enormous. They were killing me. All those years of trying to be tough and the heavy rocker and heavy womanizer and heavy drinker were killing me. And it is a relief not to have to do it."


-


" 'We sold out. The music was dead before we even went on the theater tour of Britain...The Beatles music died then, as musicians.'...'Fuckin' big bastards, that what the Beatles were. You have to be a bastard to make it, man. That's a fact, and the Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth.' ' One has to humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent...About all we can do is do it like fuckin' circus animals. I resent being an artist in that respect, I resent performing for fucking idiots who won't know--who don't know--anything. 'Cause they can't feel. I'm the one that's feeling, cause I'm the one that's expressing what they are trying to. They live vicariously through me and the other artists.'

"It was difficult to read his words without feeling that Lennon was indicting not just the band but those who had placed a stake in the Beatles. No other major artist ever razed his own image so devastatingly.

"However--not surprisingly--when Lennon applied his hurt and vitriol to his music, the result was transcendant...[for his first solo album he chose] minimalist instrumentation. Lennon sang about the most painful memories and undercurrents of his life--the death of his mother, the failures of faith and fame, the betrayals in misplaced ideals--in such a way that there was nothing to shield a listener from the resulting raw anger and anguish...he decided to 'shave off all imagery, pretensions of poetry, illusions of grandeur....Just say what it is, simple English, make it rhyme and put a backbeat on it and express yourself as simply and straightforwardly as possible.'..."

" 'The dream is over/What can I say?/The dream is over/Yesterday/I was the dream weaver/But now I'm reborn/I was the Walrus/But now I'm John/And so, dear friends/You'll just have to carry on/The dream is over."

[the album sold poorly.]

"With his next album, Imagine, Lennon tried to present his concerns more accessibly...Lennon's lyrics still chased troubling themes--but this time he wrapped them in a savvy pop sensibility. The album's title track, in particular, put forth some daring notions--and it did so in a beguiling and haunting way. The song was a prayer, the most radical prayer that ever played widely on radio. 'Imagine, both the song and the album,' Lennon said, 'is the same thing as "Working Class Hero," "Mom" and "God" on the first disc. But the first record was too real for people so nobody bought it..."Imagine" was the same message but sugarcoated...it's a big hit almost everywhere--anti-religious, anti-conventional, anti-nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugarcoated it is accepted. Now I understand what you have to do: Put your political message across with a little honey.' "


-


"After his death, things changed around us. America entered the years of Ronald Reagan; Britain, the years of Margaret Thatcher. Modern history was reversing its hopes. Rock 'n Roll, and later hip-hop, has still pushed against that reversal, but it has never pushed as hard as it did in the years of John Lennon. That isn't simply because Lennon was killed. Rather, it's because he lived. The Beatles set something loose in their time: a sense of generational transformation that moved quickly from the blissful to the artistic to the political, and for a few remarkable years, it seemed irrefutable.

"The story of our times since then has been the product of a determination to make sure that nothing like that could happen again. While "Imagine" can still be played on the radio because its music sounds familiar and comforting, there's little-if anything-with that sort of nerve in today's mainstream pop. The free market of ideas just isn't that free right now. A pop star as popular as Lennon proclaiming similar ideals in our current environment would run the risk of being judged a heretic.

"So we got something when we had John Lennon, and we lost something when his voice was killed. We lost somebody as fucked up as us, who worked his whole life to overcome himself, and, in doing so, his creativity would help us overcome the madness of our times - at least for a while. Through it all, he told us to keep faith, to keep courage, to defy our hurt, our fear, to find love and hope and fight for their meaning."

--now for the thoughts of the wildebeen--

if the opportunity presents itself to get December 15th's Rolling Stone in your hands, do yourself a favor and read Mikal Gilmore's article on John Lennon. it's concise, profound, and moving. it explores Lennon as a person growing and living and wrestling with redemption and pain through the length of his life.

in particular, it wrestles with the tension between stability and change, the competition between pragmatics and ideals, and the prophet's dilemma of speaking to a people who long for change and comfort at the same time: redemption without repentance, new life without death.

i've been remarkably sad lately over a situation at one of my adopted home-places, Houghton College. the passionate and often exciteable and ever-engaging Dr. Beech, a philosophy professor with a penchant for drawing even the most uninterested student deep into charged discussions and redeeming the potentially boring philosophy requirement into riskily deep introspection and examination, was asked by the administration not to apply for tenure. In short, he's being canned and asked not to make noise about it.

several semesters ago, Dr. Beech gave one of the few chapel speeches i have heard in my four years worthy of presentation at an institution claiming to be academic. he vigorously called for an examination of issues of justice and righteousness, for honest introspection and inquiry into the justice of acquiescing to an overwhelming flood of blind nationalism and patriotic furor.

in the aforementioned philosophy prerequisite, Dr. Beech maintained with vigor and passion the necessity of self-examination. quoting either Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle (i cannot remember which, i did not do so well in the exams) he maintained that the unexamined life is not worth living, and went further to say that Christ himself compels us to examine our lives and our selves and not merely float along on popular ideas or live comfortably as we are pleased to.

the only comparison i can find for Dr. Beech is a hippie--a youthful man driven by ideals and a sense that all is not as it should be, and in the light of such wrongs revolutions of thought and action are necessary. admittedly, he was far too well-dressed and groomed to be an actual hippie, but the spirit was there--the spirit of John Lennon's decade where the idea that humanity was being crushed by machines of metal and social and political construction was felt widely enough to become a popular movement. people threw themselves, en masse, at change.

the movement died. the eighties of greed and power and the reduction of people to systemic grist and numbers in macroeconomic models and marketing plans happened. Lennon died, and now we have the knowledge of our human dilemmas without any real hope for change. there is no The Man and there is no revolution. Just an entire world of pragmatic individuals.

no one rocks the boat anymore. no one speaks the words worth hearing--or they are not spoken loud enough. the church contents itself with a sort of Feng Shui of theological furniture. the only freedom pop culture desires is the freedom to consume. and all around us peace is being slaughtered, any meaningful communities that are not being actively destroyed are dying of neglect, people are lonely, and increasingly visible to all is how disfigured we all are as humans. but no one has the will to speak up, to challenge the status quo or the powers of the air that hold us captive.

Lennon grappled with those powers. That's why his music--even the sellout music, the sugarcoated together with the deeply honest, is treasured for its beauty and ability to speak about life to our cold dark hearts.

Dr. Beech paces behind a podium in a required class in a school specializing in speaking to the happy comfortable people and declaims with a spirit fervor dead and cold and unheard in our society since the seventies. his words kindle little fires, risky scary and necessary, in the ears of his hearers.

why are we stoning our prophets?

reasons i am happy to be alive:

i. am planning a winter hiking trip with a paramedic/ass't forest ranger from work. for tomorrow. in the snow. sleeping outside. we are packing mango-chai granola and indian rice dishes. we are persevering in spite of of the best efforts of frigid and bitter bureaucracies at work and the threat of hunters in the field.

ii. dan sahli. jared rosenau. seth nichols. chris marshall.

iii. eileen frawley, who can turn failing to finish a bike oddysey into something fun.

iv. the afterglow from an amazing houghton trip. and hi uan's amazing back massage. with paul christensen's company.

v. i saved a life this week. (finally!) within fourteen minutes of calling 911, our young gunshot wound victim was recieving definitive care at the Erie County Medical Center. it didn't look great for him, the .40 cal hole in his ribs with a matching exit wound in the back and the rather white cast his skin was taking on, and the increasing incoherence--he had started circling the drain as we arrived--but word from surgery is that he's going to pull through. i drove, and directed backboarding/extrication while Nils the Norwegian Paramedic prepped the rig.

yeah diggity. so let the tally now stand; as far as immediate life threats go: the Reaper: 4, Me: 1. i am very happy to finally be on the board.

vi. the postal service

vii. The US Postal Service

viii. the very persistent and full of surprises Rosaline Kelada-Sedra, who demanded a story from me last December and finally got it two weeks ago, and with it more soul-searching monologue than she bargained for (and indeed more than i had delivered since...well, certain portentous events). and who likes the Original Pancake House. and embraces her own Africa-time.

ix. a partner who is easy to work with and compassionate with patients. even if a bit disgruntled. and a bigger, shinier, all-around-nicer ambulance. here's to #557: 432864 miles and may she keep on tickin'!

x. Legends of the Fall ...but it makes me sad, too...in a good way?

xi. lunch with Pauls Shaffner, Christensen, and Shea, with guest appearances by Woolseys, Fortes', and Kriggs.


yeah eye candy! (or is it...iCandy? muah-ha hah hah. watch your shoulders!)

xii. driving CHOB 501, the Neonatal Intensive Care Transport, twice in one night, down to my old hospital haunts in Olean and Wellsville, in a blinding snowstorm, to pick up ailing preemies with a Neonatal Nurse Practitioner and a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist. and doing the whole drive basically--nearly to Pennsylvania and back--with lights and sirens on. and having the team compliment me at the end of the trip on being an excellent driver. yesssss...taking care of cute little newborns. and visiting the southern tier. priceless.



xiii. my grandpa told me the other day that he wants to visit my brother in africa and he wants me to come with him. i couldn't imagine a more awesome journey, an epoch for the books of lore.

xiv. christmas is coming--and i am lucky enough to get a few days around the holiday off! then there's new years, a new years i can legally drink at! and shelly bloser's wedding!

xv. the amazingly productive social effects of drinking beer together. it's like the new commensality.

xvi. i'm going to sleep now--in a bed i made, in a room i rent, with money i make, clothes i bought, furniture i fashioned, and food i cook. a comfortable place of my own.

a toast: to living on my own terms. (hah! as much as a disgruntled cog in a bitterly steep and harshly uncaring power structure can...) "to the founder of the feast..."

by popular demand...

wow. comments. i love it--after a rather long work week, it was cheer-i-fying to hear from so many of you. love ya...

for Michelle, and all those who wondered, Plough Publishing's (a now extinct entity) Advent (Watch for the Light) and Lenten (Bread and Wine) devotionals are worth whatever you have to pay to get your hands on them. They are, apparently, out of print. and, for the record, Mr. Ben Howard first introduced me to the fine devotionals, for which i am eternally greatful--in a very serious use of both words.

and now
for something Completely
. Different

a few aspirations to liven the mundane workdays of the holidays and the mundane nonholiday holidays of January:

one.
rescue time from the hecticity to put some time and thought into seriously thoughtful and not merely consumerist gifts for my family. because i don't get christmas vacation anymore--i get four days off, and i'm lucky for it.

two.
engage in a literary/visual tour-de-force by watching three exciting movies and reading three literary inspirations. i'm definitely watching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to which I'm excited to add Geisha and a little trepidatiously, Pride and Predjudice,. Then, I'll read Pride and Predjudice, Memoirs of a Geisha, and the novella that inspired my all time favorite movie, Legends of the Fall. I've already watched Legends, in fact re-watched it today, and of course from time immemorial read the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. in point of fact, my father read it to me as a child, and I have been thinking of late how greatful I am to him for that. and the (seriously) hundreds of books, biographies, and theological treatises that he read to us, faithfully, night after night throughout my childhood. I owe most of my literary knowledge and vocabulary to those books.

hitch. and shameless begging.
does anyone have/want to loan me Geisha? i think Eileen's going to loan me Pride...right Eileen? right?

three.
somehwere in there find time to watch Peter Jackson's King Kong, for which I am rather excited, Aeon Flux (Matrix with a girl? hmmmm), and The Family Stone (can you say Rachel MacAdams...?), Walk the Line (what can I say? I love Johnny Cash...). and, of course, Mike F and Becca B, you must join me because I have to see Rent and it wouldn't be the same without you...

four.
that's just for fun. for serious, Capote and Good Night and Good Luck demand attention, though they may wait for DVD release. Syriana is billed not just as a excellent movie, but a window into oil politics--and i'm greatly intrigued. let's not even mention the well-reviewed Squid and the Whale and Ushpizin.

five.
and finally. here's the challenge. Brokeback Mountain stars Heath Ledger, who has been billed on various lists as the sexiest man in America, and Jake Gyllenhaal, an up-and-coming actor who is often touted as the otherwise-good-point in recent not-so-amazing movies. Ledger has been playing heartthrob successfully for years (cute Aussie exchange student, witty New Yawk ad executive, and grinning Southern warrior-archeologist) and Jake the man's man and stoic warrior. the twist is, Brokeback Mountain is the somewhat painful love story of these two sheep ranch hands and their homosexual relationship, based on Anne Proulx's novella of the same name. it's been getting tremendous reviews, including an excellent Rolling Stone article that occumpanied my breakfast. why is a chick-flick-for-gay-guys on my must-see list this season?

this is important. a few of my friends, both old and new, are homosexuals. others have dabbled in or struggled with the label and stereotype of "he-who-sleeps-with-guys". in many circles, it's pretty much anathema--entire lives and stories, situations and individuals are redwashed by one category of their lives, one aspect of their human experience and expression. many communities calling themselves Christian live in a kind of terrified ignorance of the increasingly expanding and diversifying cultural phenomena. there's a terrified, eyes-squeezed-shut, someone-please-explain-this-to-me-so-I-don't-have-to-wrestle-with-it-myself mentality effectively isolating entire communities (such as the one from which I just graduated) from a large number of people who, in the eyes of God, cannot be simply thought of as write-offs or deeply flawed individuals.

so. do yourself a favor and do something risky. go watch Brokeback Mountain (or, if you're daring, Transamerica) this holiday. then find a gay friend and strike up a conversation and see what they think. maybe it'll end up being a bomb of a movie, or maybe it will mean to them what Legends of the Fall means to me. if you feel bold, check college campuses and hip coffeehouses for pamphlets advertising films that have sprung up from the gay community. now, i'm not advocating everyone going out and buying a gay porn tape. far from it. don't be silly. you're wasting your time. but: there's been quite a bit of pain involved in being gay all over the world, and the stories and voices from that movement have often made themselves heard through cinema. maybe it's time to start listening to those voices and hearing what they have to say, and how they have become the stories of gay men and women (or is it gay men and lesbian women? my vocabulary is inadequate...) all over the world.

because the most difficult thing in the world, generally, is really stopping and listening to your neighbor before you try to love him.

a gift

i awoke this morning awash in lethargy and disillusionment; i wondered if i would ever escape this bent-inward-self. i thought about how empty and vain and full of sound and fury my life is--i was consumed especially by my ability to pontificate without end on righteousness and justice and truth and the spiritual journey without actually taking part in the holy struggle--the jihad--to make those things realities. i wondered where i would find the strength to shake off a lifestyle of feeling good about rearranging mental furniture and renovating dusty theologies without setting foot outside my very comfortable little life.

i seem to have come to a sluggish impasse; despite all my railings and incisive indictments of modern consumerism identities and drowsy unincarnate churches theology without praxis, i have built a comfortably smug specialist consumer identity, become a drowsily unincarnate fashionable talking head, and filled myself with the importance of my ideas without feeding or clothing or comforting a single hungry, naked or brokenhearted person this week.

so i lay there, troubled and a little perplexed; where is my salvation? who can resurrect the dead, who can bring my sick soul to health?

i stood up and dealt with the sour milk in the fridge and distinct lack of breakfast cereals (my daily staple) in my larder. i called a few friends and invited one to dinner, to break out of my habitual isolation. and later, as i went walking down the sidewalk--i did one of those leaping-and-kicking-your-feet-together sort of leprechaun things that cool people in musicals do and cool people in real life never do. especially not in the middle of my neighborhood. but i felt like doing it, because being outside always cheers me up, even on (sometimes, especially on) blustery days in late fall. and i figure, if i do it enough, i'll be able to manage tapping my heels together twice midjump, instead of my current quick-clap-and-stumble awkward version.

and as i hung there midair, thinking at the speed of light so as to have great and amazing thought frozen in micromoments of action, i remembered that not three months ago i was walking on crutches. For two months i couldn't go anywhere without an ankle brace on. i would come home from work limping like an old man and grab ice packs out of the freezer. Four weeks ago a grin split my face and i leaped for joy (immediately grimacing in pain) for the boy who once ran three miles in twenty-one minutes could finally managed more than a gimpy one-block jog. and sometime last week i was standing on my damaged right ankle stretching really far when i realized how miraculous it was that i was feeling no pain.

so there i am, hanging midair with panache to make that dude from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers green with envy, thinking, wow. i am also talking about girls (i guess they're women now that i'm officially a long way removed from high school) again with Dan Sahli and laughing carefreely more often and speaking and writing with boldness and confidence that were completely shattered last year. i'm no longer so easily blown and tossed by discouragement and stress, and i make bold plans more often and am dreaming and stowing away cash for the future. i'm a long way from that long December.

the body heals when you give it time--it's processes are slow, almost imperceptible until you look at baby pictures. i went from one foot to 5'11" one quarter-inch at a time, and i went from 135 (my pre-college weight) to 160 one all-you-can-eat cafeteria buffet and one step-carrying-sixty-pounds-and-a-canoe at a time. i shave my head and it grows--not when i'm watching, but behind my back, while i'm asleep. i wake one morning after another, one bowl of cereal at a time, over and over and over and over again, dressing for work and shaving and riding off and riding back and sleeping and waking and doing it all over again. and my body is nourished and wore out and rested and life goes on. the sun comes up. the sun goes down. the seasons pass, and turn around, and come again.

and my ankle heals. and so does my heart. and when i peruse the pictures from Tanzania, and the journal and blog entries from last year, i remember a weekend when i couldn't walk for the pain in my ankle and a week where i didn't talk to anyone for the pain that was in my heart. and last week i rode my bicycle fifty miles and at the end knew such richness of fellowship and joy as blows away the word friend. the ways of salvation are slow wrought, painful, meandering, and mundane. they are accomplished over days and months and years, and even generations. they are always quietly lapping like waves on the shore, and as deep and mysterious and mercurial as the oceans.

so, there i was, midleap, and part of my heart was stilled and awe-filled and at peace. but i landed (with a slight wince--i'm still not full well yet) and even reassured, i hunger still to be more than an idea-monger, words without substance and thought without deed, unformed or misshapen steel. i know my need more than ever to be saved and remade and brought to life. and i know more than ever the forces of death and despair that stalk through the streets of the city of my sojourn, how they strike the rich and the poor and the working-to-get-by alike, forces that i feel bound to see but powerless to resist.

that's when i checked my mail (ok, i took a couple more leaps and made my destination and returned home--but for the sake of narrative, seriously, stop interrupting!) and found a package from home. with great rejoicing i discovered an Advent devotional from my mother, an early Christmas gift, the companion to a Lenten devotional which sustained my soul through difficult times in my Tanzanian spring and ever since.

immediately, i opened and read: in classic Christian form, Bonhoeffer (who knew rather intimately the confines of a prison cell), told of Advent as "a prison cell in which one waits and hopes and does various unessential things...but is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside," while J.B. Phillips warned against indifference, urging vigilance and the donning of work clothes, that we may be about our master's business when he comes to finish setting the world aright.

so now i'm not hungering alone, and my longing is not aimless. my soul is set on pilgrimage this winter season, and it is salvation that my heart is working towards. come and join us; watch and pray--time is short and our need is great.

pole

people here are rude. if you are different or new or learning a new place, they take advantage of that and poke fun at you and use you for their amusement or, if you're lucky, they don't bother you much. they use social power to make you hurt until you gather enough social power or verbal prowess of your own to fight back and etch out your own little niche in the power structure which you maintain by abusing those below you. fellowship is a hoarded commodity--but disdain is free! and rather palpable. and almost a sport, people are so eager to jump to it.

management shits on supervisors; supervisors piss on labor; labor does other things to new guys; new guys scrabble for position. onward marches the cycle, each looking to his own, all squinty-eyed and posessive.

[sigh] i am tired of mankind. and womankind.

i like trees though. and bicycles. and snow. and thank the sweet lord for discmen, because if i didn't have the The Postal Service playing ("don't wake me/i plan on sleping in") i'd have to be listening to what my housemate and his girlfriend are doing in the next room over. they woke up pretty quickly after i got to sleep and i don't think sunday morning means church for them--so i guess it means no peaceful slumber for me either.

i want to go back to Tanzania. people there are civilized. or at least civil. or, hell, i'd go to Hawaii. check out deanna, who has finally posted after a long absence, during which she apparently died after a life of sainthood and went to heaven.

true to form

(i) "You bring the mammoth, I'll bring the mead." -Dan Perrine

(ii) "Overwhelming firepower is always the solution." -Mark Lemke

(iii) "Boys... [sigh]" -Becca Ballard

my conclusion of the evening is that (Gustav, listen up!) the key to really enjoying beer is the food that you eat with it. for instance--Don Pablo's + dos Coronas + dos limes = amazing culinary happiness. yessss! another beer that I enjoy! life is full of good things.

including--my new baby. i cannot describe how incredibly happy i am. we were made for each other.





--i can pick it up with two fingers, and it's exceedingly fast. and smooth. and quick around the corners. and incredibly good looking. like its owner. :)

ahhhh...

sleeping soundly; waking up well rested, no alarm clock; 99c early bird special at Amy's; a morning stroll through the park; hiking boots and blue jeans; my old battered travelin' sweater; the soft noise of rain sheepishly going about its business; nickel creek on the stereo; emails from friends in faraway countries; people who get needing to take a long walk in the fall rain and know well the full joy of poly and wool and waterproof boots and mud.

a good morning to remember who i am. had a moment of spartan brevity and poetry with Jared last night; a longer conversation with Seth: men who drink deeply from life, both of death and resurrection. good compañeros a peregrinar comun. (gr?)

time.

bizarre, "only dan could manage this" kind of week. i realized several hours ago that it was sunday, 3 a.m., not saturday 3 a.m., that it was the fourth/final day of my rotation, not the third, that i had completely forgotten about an entire day of work somehow, and that for at least one day i was completely Disoriented to Time and Events. which, if i were one of my patients, would make me incompetent to make medical decisions. well. i made them anyway. it's a good thing i got it straightened out before sleeping another day away and making the discovery while reporting to work next evening.

in a bizarre twist of fate, i took a patient to the hospital tuesday night; wednesday night, i ferried in the transplant team and then took that team back to the airport with his heart (he had no use for it anymore). huh. wierd. i took a nasty gunshot wound, an ugly knife wound, a diabetic near-coma, and (shocker!) a drunken college student, too. and Andy the MD resident let me watch him stitch the knife wound up, too! it's inspired me to look into getting a suture kit for my more seriously long-range adventures.

and, I talked to a patient for twenty minutes through her apartment's locked door before the BFD managed to find someone with appropriate keys to get us in. what a week. I'm staying up for another few hours to catch the early-bird breakfast special at Amy's. then, maybe morning mass, and find a park to sit and read in until i find some better way to stay awake until the Houghton College Choir performs as St. Andy's. By then, if I make it without collapse, I'll be ready for bed and the resumption of a few days on a real sleep schedule--the kind where you get to see the sun shine...


--------------


pt. II

so i was thinking about how badly my feet smelled after four consecutive days smashed into my work boots and it reminded me of the godawful reek that was my first clue in Tanzania that my blisters were seioursly infected. and that reminded me of how awesome it was to bathe my feet in Dettol, a medical wonder unmatched in Western civilization, for reasons i cannot comprehend. and that reminded me of bryan, my friend who recommended the Dettol. so later in my perusing of various webs of blogs and livejournals, it was no surprise to me later to suddenly be reminded of something bryan said once. many people laughed at the occasion. but the more i think about it, the more it sounds like basically exactly what i'm thinking about love and marriage. maybe this is a bad sign that something so many people thought comedic strikes me as so profound. but i like it right now:

"What I want is a woman to have adventures with--I don't want the woman to be the adventure!"

ladies and gentlemen, the great Bryan Adkins.

confessions of the bibliophile (i)

after months of excitement, extended lulls and momentary all-night euphoric multichapter blitzkreigs, I have finished David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse. many of you have witnessed my excitement over this book--some perhaps enough repetitions to make you sick. but I have to say it again:

this is one of the most important books of [now]. what the communist manifesto was to the poor politically and economically disenchanted masses of the world, this book is to those disenchanted with every soul-destroying force bastard-spawned by our long, simultaneously glorious and ignominious Anglo-Saxon-American civilization. (I'm starting to sound like Ian Kanski...)

in honor of this moment, I give you my list:

The Nine Most Important Books of my Short Life:

1. C.S. Lewis' 'Til We Have Faces
2. Thomas Merton's No Man Is An Island
3. David Dark's Everyday Apocalypse
4. Matthew Stover's Traitor
5. Eleanor Vandevort's A Leopard Tamed
6. Donald Miller's Prayer and the Art of Volkswagon Maintenance (now republished as Through Painted Deserts)
7. Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog
8. J.R.R. Tolkein's Silmarillion
9. Plough Press's Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

I suppose I could have rounded it out to ten, or kept going on to twenty, but these are the nine that came to mind within five minutes of realizing that Apocalypse was going to be one of the most important books I'd ever read, no browsing or searching necessary. There are a lot of books I've been excited about--but these nine are a part of me. The ideas that live in them live in me to the extent that I don't have to think very hard to remember reading them or figure out where I found them.

Four of these books are works of fiction; of the other five, one is a collection of excerpts that read like conversations, three move with compelling narrative style, and one is a series of extended meditations. Fiction and narrative put abstract things into context, like fish into water, where they can breath and swim and cavort and be observed in life. Truth dehydrated, preserved and presented divorced from story is no truth at all, like a fish out of water is not very long a fish.

Finally, of the four works of fiction, two are fantasy and two science fiction. I feel a bit sheepish for it, but a bit relieved too: like coming out of the closet or being caught picking my nose. I like science fiction, and fantasy more, and people who are snobby about their genres are missing out on a whole lot of good writing. so there. and yes, Traitor is a Star Wars book. It's called incarnation, guys!

[unthinking]

there are times when it is bad to think. every thought leads back to myself. i try to escape in others, but their faces keep turning into mine with wide, empty eyes. instead of their words i hear the cold empty wind, and my voice--cold and biting too. everything is twisted: friendship to comparison, joy to a harsh measuring stick, rejoicing to sick laughter, anticipation to scheming, sharing to hoarding, fellowship to competition. desperation feeds on itself and grows by leaps and bounds. i try to close my eyes but the vision changes not. dark orange tints the landscape to monochrome, trickling into the crumbling sky.

it is for times such as these that god gave us mindless labor, to forget ourselves in soil and toil and splitting wood. simple all-consuming tasks to distract us from outselves. like starcraft. god made mindless computer games too. being averse to mindless labor and out of wood to split...

midnight cuisine

for Dan P, and others who follow the music of the night, a guide to post-midnight cuisine in Buffalo, culled from my recent experiences, and still growing.

Timmy Ho's (Tim Hortons for the uninitiated): 24-7, always there for you--in the Apple Zone, Clinton and Bailey; in the Charley on Delaware near Hertel; in the David, Kensington and Eggert; for honorable mention, the mini-Timmie's at the gas station at Main and Winspear. Pastries and the best free cuppa joe a hard working civil servant can ask for.

Jim's Steakout: open until 5 am, Elmwood and Allen, Elmwood North of Lafayette, Main North of Hertel, and Chippewa East of Delaware, if you can force your way through the crowds of drunken partyers on the notorious "Chip Strip". Tacos, wings, subs, specializing in steak things and burning hot things.

That Little Greasy Place with the Hard To Remember Name and the Bulletproof Glass and Dingy 70's Dining Area: Main and Fillmore, if you need anything--and I mean anything--24hrs a day. French Toast, a dozen different burgers, souvlaki, tacos, subs--the only thing they don't do (as far as I can remember) is pizza.

Don't pass up the Wilson Farms and assorted gas stations; especially gracious are the Wilson Farms operators who give free cappucino from the mini-Timmie's--rock on!

The find of the night: Louies, the best hotdog/burger joint in Buffalo, is open until four! Possibly the best chili dog I have ever et. Locations at Elmwood and Hodge, and elsewhere! (hmmm...new street mission: find all the Louies!)

Of course, let us not forget the last desperate stands: McDonald's, available at Main and Utica-ish, and William and Jefferson (oddly, the next road south on Jefferson is Clinton--go figure): 99c parfaits/sundaes if your craving is ice cream, or splurge on a McFlurry! 24hr drive through! and if you're completely desperate, there's always Burger King--but seriously...you have to be really desperate...Delaware and Amherst + Main just north of North.

If it's not too late--bar/pizza joints and bar/eateries are also an option.

And this is only scratching the surface: I haven't even scratched the surface on the Buffalo's specialty: pizza parlors. Compiling and comparing would be a life's work. A delicious life's work...

Well, it's six a.m., and in Detroit my dad's getting up to work out. I'm going to bed. cheers!

a bit of clarification, for the sake of my dear mother

Fillmore Wesleyan Church in no way condones or supports the consumption of blood, human or otherwise, nocturnal feeding habits, or covens of immortal dark avengers fighting eternal struggles.

Nor should newly shaven scalp and the appearance of my red streaked face be taken as any more than the result of boredom meeting electric razors and, later, an overenthusiastically shaken glass-marker pen meant for Josh Hazelton's little Jetta's windows in a wedding-reunion-sorta deal.

These are perfectly explicable and as they are provide no reasoning for the ridiculous notion that I would be a vampire. Seriously. Pay no attention to such foolish notions. I am an ordinary mundane mortal just as yourselves...

good...evemorningish whatever

for all those who have heard my nonstop *itching lately about work and coworkers, i feel obligated to now state: i just got off an overnight and work is great. i love the quiet, the chill, the open roads, the low call volume, the free coffee, the ability to read an entire issue of BusinessWeek in one shift, the interesting calls, TV at Charlie and David quarters...i actually feel like i'm gettin the hang of this...today i am one cheerful creature of the night.

of course, maybe it's just because of my recent rebirth as a vampire at Fillmore Wesleyan Church. :)


at any rate, it's time to curl up and get my eyes closed before the sun comes up.

currently listening to...

my super-cool awesomest newest CD in the rack:

Emmanuel Jal + Abdel Gadir Salim = Ceasefire (One Sudanese Rapper + One North Sudanese Arabic Oud Player = Awesomeness)

I don't think I've ever heard rap languid and tight before...much less in four languages at once: English, Arabic, Nuer, and Swahili. Pump it up! It's like belly-dancing/jazz/Eastern/rap/choir...hmmm...chant-hop.

i can't sleep nights anymore so...

i updated my flikr photos it's a pretty cool visual journey, if a bit sparse of late. i swear, all i do is work and sleep, work and sleep, work and sleep, and wonder at the world.

in other news, i discovered this old draft that i never published, from June 2004. part of my perennial frustration with womenfolk. tee hee.

and, i want to live with these guys for a while. maybe in a summer or two i'll take a leave of absence.

sabbath

this evening has an apple-cider-sunday sort of peace to it. it's slow flowing: my childhood sundays were meandering affairs, curled up in a blue comfy chair reading or playing chess or slowly watching castles and spaceships take shape from the lego bricks that formed the building blocks of my playground. all was quiet, for mom and dad were napping after our formal sunday meals, and all was slow, for our chauffers were taking us nowhere and we had no work or school to occupy our days. sunshine poured in through the silence and warmth bathed our solitude, our creativity, our joy.

today, the sunlight is already gone, but the warmth persists in my scratchy wool sweater and battered easy chair. i woke a few hours before sunset, to the stillness left unmolested by alarm clocks and phones and their ilk--i woke to smile and relax and ponder the strange dreams that filled my daytime slumber. i took idle note of some imposing restlessness: i worked almost eighty hours this week, six overnights straight with little time but to sleep and eat breakfast and hit the road in between. in two days i will work at least four more, and my larder is as empty as my laundry basket and email inbox are full. my bike my only vehicle, needs maintenance and there is also the pressing impulse to justify my recent library additions by actually reading them. the wasted time was beginning to pile in on me.

but, graciously, my baser instincts asserted themselves, and i curled up in my sleeping bag and with a cheerful grin acknowledged the day's unfettered potential for procrastination and thought about breakfast. breakfast. i decided to forego breakfast as i was out of syrup, eggs, and bread, and had been subsisting for entirely too long on cereal. if Cheerios lose their inherent joy, i shall truly be in for a long string of morning drudgery.

well. that left beans and rice. i was uninspired. i wandered downstairs, past the tragic empty spaces on my food shelves, clinging to my shabby hiking shorts and scratchy wool armor (manfully worn with no intervening t-shirt) for warmth and comfort and memories of mornings on the trail. i sadly shook a box of swiss cake rolls, knowing from yesterday's shake that ther would be no reassuring thump of one last happy little package tucked in the back. granola bars and canned green beans simply wouldn't do. the box pile of odds and ends salvaged from my brother's relocation to Africa yielded crackers, a novelty for my palate these days. not bad. lima beans, stuffing and turkey helper? uninspiring.

but the fridge yielded gold: the remnants of a half-gallon of apple cider that Mike and I split on a whim a week or so ago. suddenly rice and crackers and beans didn't sound so simple. apple cider is exciting, in an expectant sort of way. you cannot drink apple cider in a hurry--it's disarming presence gracefuly disallows action. like sundays at home, it must meander in gentle sips, cradled in both hands, to be enjoyed in solitude and peace or the glowing warmth of fireplaces and fellowship. it is a drink for warming the hands while coming in from the cold, to share with friends when the day's business is done and there is to be no hustling, bustling, or voices raised in anything but laughter. it is for sprawling on couches or huddling on logs or being tucked into scratchy old sweaters and curling up in comforters. it proclaims evenings settled in, boots tucked away and ignored, and the anticipation of trekking no father from the living room than the kitchen, the den, or where two or more are gathered in unpurpose-driven fellowship.

it is, in short, an excellent excuse to postpone foraging forays and any quest or duty reeking of importance--as long as it was still good. i had yet to actually drink any: i hadn't found the time on my 4 p.m. "morning" dash out the door find and clean a proper cup in order to partake. the old empty plastic gatorade bottles and glass beer bottles that carry fauceted water to my hydration needs simply will not do for cider: it's too tough to pour cider into the beer bottles and drinking cider from plastic nears blasphemy for lack of proper ceremony.

a sniff from the jug provided enough hope to scour the cupboards for glass, to be thoroughly cleaned for taste's sake and thoroughly rinsed in cold water to preserve coolness. the cider poured as it should. it looked as it should, in simple unassuming brown. it tasted as it should. i read a little, of the beauty of Oregon and the change of seasons and the cycle of births and deaths, leavetakings and homecomings, and how all things grow and change and return. soon Jake joined me from the cellar where he dwells, and i ate my rice while he cooked his. we talked about the outdoors and wand'ring and friends who have hitch-hiked or train-hopped or bicycled their ways across vast distances, great oceans of beauty. i sat and sipped cider. after a long week's labor and stress and isolation, i was still and at home, my day for cooking a slow meal and sipping cider and for rest.

and then i remembered. today is sunday. apple-cider sunday.

shabbat shalom!

a transcontinental, one-sided conversation :)

Hey bro -
Like the link about "thoughts dear to you." I've heard a lot of McLaren secondhand, but not read any directly.

I take exception with one point. I agree with the first list of things God hates: sin, selfish arrogance, indifference and hate. And we ought to be for what God is for and against what He is against. But the second list: God being against exclusion and suffering, I am not so sure about. Is God really against suffering? Perhaps, but it seems he is against sin more, it pleasing Him to have Jesus suffer too for sin. Having God be primarily concerned with suffering and exclusion seems like an attempt to remake God in a "sensitive 90's guy" definition of God and love - which I don't buy. Just ruminated on love in church Sunday - perhaps love means causing "suffering" in the short run for someone's better in the long run? Perhaps it is more loving and merciful for God to cause me to suffer and change rather than leave me in my pitiful, pathetic current state...

Peace,
Jeff


broski,
it's a pity you are far away and we cannot share this "baada ya kazi" style over Tusker. i have a section of my budget labeled "Africa" and it's growing, albeit way too slowly. so sometime we will fellowship again in this lovely realm of ideas.

I do not see how God could be more against sin than suffering--staring into the eyes of someone starving or lonely or suicidal or just plain bored and saying, no, what's really important is to follow these rules; because you broke these rules, I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to have anything to do with you and you're going to have to suffer forever when you die. It's really your fault: you broke the rules.

I used to think that the Seven Deadly Sins were a list of things you didn't do because if you did, Jesus would kill you. Then, for a while, I became more enlightened and realized that no, you wouldn't die now, you'd die the second death and never get to be happy in heaven.

Then I met Mike Walters, a theology prof at Houghton, who convinced me that the whole idea started with a dude named Evagrius, who lived with a bunch of other dudes in one of the first monastic communities; he came up with the Eight Bad Thoughts, or something like that, to explain all the pain and sorrow and suffering that each member of the community inflicted on each other and themselves. Later a pope with a flair for the dramatic and a little knowledge of numbers trimmed it down to seven and added the flashy title and wrote a bestselling book about the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Big Secret behind the seven deadly sins isn't some law code, where you break them and the judge in the wig says, "sorry son, but you broke the rules. you lose. go to hell. do not pass go, do not collect any celestial goodies that are saved up for good people who make me happy by following rules..."

The Big Secret is that they Seven Deadly Sins are Deadly. They kill you. Then they kill people around you. They start with your soul, Greed and Envy stealing your happiness and your purpose, and then Gluttony and Sloth destroys your body and mind while Rage and Lust and Pride wreak havoc in your relationships. You end up a miserable, lonely, angry, fear-filled, hollow, disappointed whining person. These things, when they run your soul, destroy it. This is a place I have been. Sin, in truth, destroys you. It makes you miserable, it turns you into a pathetically vicious and self-centered monster.

Forget far-off pond'rings about heaven and hell--I want to be saved right now from becoming any more of a soul-sucked zombie than I already am. I want good relationships with people; I don't want to spend my days being disappointed by fame, material posessions, my own impressive self, mind-numbingly lonely sex, and my slowly decaying body and mind. I've looked around the world and seen nothing but miserable people deluding themselves about their own importance and happiness--crumbling monuments built on slavery and oppression and suffering.

Why then, would people sin? My guess is suffering. People have suffered so much that they do not, in G.K. Chesterton's words, know how to be human anymore. All they know how to be is monsters, tearing at each other and themselves in an frenzied orgy of destructive attempts at living. Love is painful and doomed to failure or betrayal or both; lust is a safer option for the short-term, and all we know for no one has shown us what love looks like. Sharing is dangerous, hoarding is safe--for the short term. As life becomes increasingly more meaningless, people turn to whatever they can get for the ailment in their souls. And find only disappointment.

It helps to look at human society as the combined result of the worst natural disaster and most horrifying act of war ever perpetrated (Donald Miller's idea, not mine). Bloody, wounded, and scared, they will do anything to survive--even if it ensures their prolonged misery. They strike out at each other in fear and blindness. They band together in little communities for survival. They submit to abusive power structures because they fear that they cannot survive on their own. They are always edgy and uncertain of their place within the community, reflexively attempting to prove their importance at every chance.

Then Robert Jervis' security dilemma pops up, as communities run into each other. They know that other groups can threaten them, so each one becomes a threat to the others by amassing power out of fear. Ideology is used to strengthen the community and ensure "our" safety; us verse them becomes more and more tense. Fragmentation and war ensue.

The thing is, no one knows how to live anymore. All we know how to do is lust and die alone. No one knows what it's like not to be ruled by fear, or have relationships untainted by envy, greed, and lust. We all suffer, and we all cause ourselves and others to suffer and slowly die inside--if we ever even knew life at all.

The exciting thing about Jesus is--He was the first to suffer, but not sin. He was the first to grow up in a world that specializes in breeding miserable monsters out of babies without becoming a monster himself. He showed us the way out of our miserable, self-destructive lives that didn't involve avoiding the everyday suffering of living with everyone else's sin.

He was sinned against, but did not sin. And if we follow his example, we discover that the way of life we are used to--the diseased and self-destructive habits we've picked up from those around us unconsciously or used to cope with the suffering in our lives--is soul suicide. But His way--the way of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, self-control--is the way of life. Our lives, day by day, become what they were meant to be: glorious, full of life and joy and creativity and community.

Christ did not avoid the suffering inherent in living in our world--but he was no slave to its destructive and debilitating patterns. Our challenge and calling is to likewise belong in this world, to taste of its suffering and joy deeply, and to become part of the Restoration--the Redemption.

But I am off-topic. We were talking about sin verses suffering, and which is more important to god.

The stories tell of a god who walked the earth, suffering and laughing and teaching monsters how to become people, who spent a great deal of time at parties with drunk people and strippers and prostitutes and he wasn't sad for them because they were breaking the rules--he was sad for them because after the drugs and sex and the thrill of money and power and toys and prestige wore off they were still miserable, hurt and alone. Life, in the unforgettable words of Thomas Hobbes, was solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short, and they were making the best way of it that they could. He was happy that they knew that there was a fundamental problem with the earth--they were ready for an answer that way.

The stories tell of god walking the earth, and getting angry when the churchgoers and pastors and dignified, successful, upstanding community members didn't realize that their lives, too, were full of misery and loneliness. They, too, were simply making the best of it they could, except they thought that their best was a lot better than everyone else's best and Divinely Ispired and Purpose Driven and Morally Superior and all that drivel. They denied their common plight, their common wounds, their common needs, expressed in different forms but fundamentally the same illness that they shared with the pimps and car thieves and loose women and child molesters and hookers and tax collectors and politicians and Pharisees.

When they denied their common plight, their common lost-ness and their common human experience of suffering and confusion, they cut their hearts off from compassion. Compassion is not pity, bemused or otherwise, bestowed from the better position. It is literally suffering great emotion with. The religious made no effort to understand their neighbors, much less to love and fellowship with them. Instead of glorying in the image of God in everyone, they began judging people through a rubric: good and bad, right and wrong, Christian and non-Christian, acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. The people became judged by the behavior, instead of the behavior by the people. The story of the individual went out the window with fellowship and compassion.

I think that if I believe anything, I believe that what Christ is doing is not setting up some cosmic contest where the holier or those with better doctrine are rewarded and those who are more screwed up or less intellectual and punished. God does not institute suffering to correct sin: he corrects sin to end suffering. Kids in a fight will often try to get Mom or Dad to prove them right, or at least more right. The point is not that some will say "Ah-Hah! We told you so!" while others hang their heads. The point is not to reward the good kids and make sure the bad ones feel ashamed.

The point is to keep surprising all of them by bringing them face-to-face with themselves and all the evil and distortion that is there, and then to surprise them even more with grace and redemption until they laugh at the notion that they ever called each other "good" or "bad" or any other names but those which they were called by Christ.

I don't know if this is about sin or suffering anymore--but it is much easier to isolate sin and define yourself out of it when you isolate it from suffering. Sin without suffering becomes someone else's problem, then someone else's fault, and soon those people are bad and we are good. Sin without suffering ends blaming without understanding, accusation without compassion, blame without involvement. Then it can be individual, it can belong to someone else and not be our whole, messed up common heritage as human beings. If sin were divorced from suffering, and the two could be weighed in the balance, what kind of god would find sin more important than suffering, the proper formalities more important that the lifesaving measures?

Sin alone seems detatched, academic, as simple as an individual choice, something we've overcome, why haven't they? Suffering, that has meat to it. You see it in people's eyes, you know it when it haunts you, you feel its pangs when you find yourself embroiled in it, causing it in your neighbors without even realizing it, discovering it raw and open in your heart in places you thought were all right. And usually, you can follow it, track it by the blood and body parts in its wake, right to the evil in your own heart. And then you can pick up your cross and join the war on suffering, the Redemption War, the only one worth fighting, reclaiming this tortured battleground one injured heart at a time.

well, as usual brother, i've wandered off topic almost immediately and stayed there despite all attempts to remain within the scope of the question. but i think that's the problem--we're asking different questions, trying to feel each other out from different definitions, different passions, different emphases. i hope that this serves as not as a challenge, but as a chance to feel with me some emotions, and explore with me some ideas in the way that i am exploring them.

cheers!
dan

yeah. boo - yah baby.

boo yah baby. the high for the day was 54 Fahrenheit, not counting a stiff wind off the water. it was down to 42 Fahrenheit by the time we got back to my place, again not counting the stiff breeze, six hours later (three and a half solid pedaling, two and a half split between a pastry shop and Becca's house). it rained the entire time. our breath made fog, our tires made spray, our heroism made family history. we bicycled 31 miles in all, northeast to pick up the Amherst Conservation trail, west and north along the Erie Canal to the Niagara River, south along the waterfront downtown to the the pier, east through a new trail along the Scajaquada/Hoyt Lake/Delaware Park, up the final stretch of Hertel.

by the power of Gore-Tex, Under-Armor and courage bordering on the foolhardy, compelled by a strange notion to do something completely nonsensical in a name of stiff upper lips and manly determination and the bold tradition of "because it's there!", we lived the day laughing at the silly mortals cowering in their four-wheeled boxes.

they hide from glory that shun mother nature's wild embrace.

then we drank hot chocolate and took warm showers and did inherently manly bike maintenance and ate mom's homemade cinnamon rolls.

what can i say--my dad's cool. i'm cooking up an even doozier ride for next time...

courtesy of the other dan holcomb

quick thought of the day

if you have more time, courtesy of Aram Mitchell:

i have had these ideas, but not so clearly, and they are dear to me. so read them. please.

and, for fun, some other fruits of the day:
yeah, I know the guy who wrote the first two

wishin' on a star

wow

read this! be joyful!

in other news, i have become a creature of the night: i work from five p.m. to five a.m. every night, in the city, four days on followed by four days off. so basically, for four days i work all night and sleep all day, rise, breakfast and repeat.

and for the other four? i'm about to find out. but i think it involves a lot of slept-through days and a lot of long nights reading, writing, and watching Lost. and by the way, madame diercks: playing golf while struggling verse the elements to survive and overcoming obstacles like polar bears and strange frenchwomen is a sophisticated portrayal of the paradox between surviving and living, and the human need to find fulfillment instead of just getting by with food, shelter, and all the other mundane realities of life. it's brilliant in fact. Seinfeld? Swinefilled. Pshaw! Rubbish! other British slang and idiom!



ps--if you find yourself stricken by insomnia (or dinner) between the hours of five pm and five am next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights...call me. I'm awake. and quite possibly bored.