A Newer Post

As you can tell, I haven't written anything in a while. More on that later. In the mean time, here is a doodle I cooked up this afternoon. It's part of a scene in an idea for a play I hatched, also this afternoon.
The play is set in a Christian College in the Midwest, much like Cornerstone. The protagonist is a a 5th year or 6th year senior, much like myself. The story comes from his journey through the year. His struggles he encounters being relatively old in an undergraduate program, his issues with personal identity, his relationships, a lack of post-graduate plans, and others.
It's just an idea, but you never know what might come out of it.

This scene in particular is set in an all guys Freshmen Dorm room (Quincer). It's late and Andrew - yes, I'm naming the protagonist after myself for now - is getting ready to leave to go home for the night. He's tired. He's worked all night, and he has class in the morning. He's in the dorm of a friend, and a bunch of freshmen are hanging out in the room. One of the freshmen - one he doesn't know all that well - has just asked why one of Andrew's close friends is such a dick all the time. This is Andrew's response (in the perfect world, where the perfect monologues just come to us).

Andrew:

You’re right. Carl can be a dick sometimes. You can chalk some of that up to the fact that that is just his sense of humor. He gets under your skin to get a reaction, and he gets sweet, sweet satisfaction out of it. You can also chalk up some of his dickishness to the fact that he is, in fact, sometimes a dick. He can be hard to be around. He’s easily irritated, he has a short fuse, he lashes out. He recognizes it as a fault, and he’s working on it. But I will say this about him. For all of his shortcomings and all of his immaturity, he’s smart, he’s honest about the way he feels, and he’s one of the best judges of character that I have ever met, and I know tons of people. So perhaps instead of asking yourself “Why is he picking on me?” you should instead look in the mirror and ask yourself, “Why is he picking on me?” Maybe you deserve some of the shit coming your way. I don’t know. I don’t know you -

Offending Freshmen: (interrupting)

But -

Andrew:

Shut up -

O.F.:

He’s -

Andrew:

Shut UP. Something tells me that all of my words are lost on you. You’d rather feel as if you’re some innocent recipient of undue persecution. It’s certainly easier to go through life thinking that. That certainly makes sense. I see it now. When you were asked why he’s a dick you weren’t actually interested in the answer, you just wanted the rest of us to know that you thought he was a dick. Listen up freshman. You’re entitled to your opinion as much as the next man, but this is college. If there is any justice, you better know that when you ask a question, you’ve got an answer coming your way, and how much you like the answer is arbitrary. (to the rest of the room) And that goes for the rest of you. I’ve been in University too long to stand for pointless posturing when I don’t need to. You start out going to college not knowing anything. Hopefully by the time you’ve hit Junior year you’ve applied yourself enough to actually contribute. Before then, you’re just wasting everybody else’s time.

Sophomore:

Is that what you think you're doing now? Contributing?

Andrew:

Only in the way that weeding a garden can sometimes contribute.

The Other Shoe Drops

It's been a while since I've posted. A lot's happened since April. But I don't write...there's a reason my Blog is entitled what it is. I guess my websites collect dust as well.

I write today out of my dismay.

Earlier this afternoon I read from my Bible. In the course of daily readings, I started a about a month ago in 1st Samuel and worked my way through, finishing the book 2nd Samuel today.
My growing knowledge of literature, combined with my Study Bible's handy footnotes caused me to pick up on a lot that I feel is missed by a potentially pedestrian reading.
The author's contrasting of a King abusing power and a King seeking God in all that he does, and what the consequences are when that Godly King chooses in turn to abuse power. How literarily it seems divine punishments fit crimes against God.
How the characters are as real and as human as any in classic literature - filled with complex flaws, fears, strengths, weaknesses, and complex motivations.
The author's arrangement of information into a concise, book-ending pattern. Thanks to Mr. Schienk, I realize this is known as a "chiastic structure", when the events of the story fall into a not-necessarily chronological order, but in an order that instead brings emphasis on events...never mind, I guess it's a lot harder to explain than I thought.
The point is, I have actually enjoyed reading my Bible for reasons both spiritual and intellectual. Who'd a thunk it? An in depth reading brings not only the peace of spirit, but also mental stimulation.

TURNING POINT
And I've been in desperate need of spiritl-peace lately. I only need to look at my daily actions and the motivations behind them to realize that I am a terrible, terrible, terrible person and I need to change.
I am selfish and weak and anxious.
Quite often I feel totally purposeless.
I long for a full, selfless life full of intention and a peaceful soul.
That is why I read my Bible.
That is why I pray.
That is why I believe what I believe.
I've tried other ways and they simply do not work.
I know too many people who have done the same and have reached the same conclusion.

So I finish my reading, I finish 2nd Samuel, filled with a sense of fulfillment and slight wonder at the power of Biblical Literature, and I immediately log onto my Facebook, what one might call one of the most thorough introspections into the current Zeitgeist, to date.
I followed a link that a friend of mine who is an atheist had posted on her profile.
"yourgodisimaginary.com", complete with the youtube video: "Proving the Bible is Repulsive"

I refuse to comment on this literature, other than to say it hurts my feelings very much to have the way of life I have chosen, or some might argue, the way of life that has chosen me, to be slandered so.

I mutual respect so impossible?

Today I...

Today I said farewell to Intern Josh. His time is up - his wings are spreaded.
Today I spent the afternoon running downtown with Mike Tatu. We went to the apartment over The Bitter End. The couple who live there are moving to Washington State with their baby. For School. With the help of the Husband and the guy who lives across the hall, we carried a small piano down the narrow stairs and out the door. Two guys from behind the counter of the delicatessen next door helped us lift into the waiting, bright-yellow, cargo van. We drove to Mike's condo - and the piano tipped over twice. Scott Townley helped us move it from the van into Mike's living room.
I got lost on the way to Jay's house. I traveled in a wide looping circle over the Alaska, Lowell, and Caledonia borders. Twice.
Scott and I ran errands with Jay.
We drove with Mr. Kamphuis to the air-port and saw Jay off to South Africa.
(I am the dropper off-er and the picker-upper, never the traveler, but my time will come.)
I wrote a letter to Sarah.
And now I pack - choose which to abandon, and save that which is dear.
For a season has ended and another has begun.
And I must lighten my load in order to be ready for what comes next.
I fight the urge to burn half and donate the rest.
I loved - and talked, and listened, and failed to do all three of these in varying amounts as well.
I grew a little taller.
I wrote this.
You read it.

Updates

I never blog anymore. I have more important things to do with my time. Nobody ever reads this thing anyway. I don't blame them. The majority of blogs are simply the old bathrooms in your high school. The poorly lit ones with white cinder-block walls that stood at the end of the narrow hallways. People opt to yell their words at infrequent times, and the echos blend into a sound most can empathize with. Depressing? I'm sorry. Confusing? I bet.
I just picked up the link tonight to post something quick - this is a late night phone call when I don't know who to call. A whimper from deep within myself - showing a side few ever see.

I am wrapping up my second year at Grand Rapids Community College. I have spent a few thousand dollars, easily a couple dozen thousand man hours, more late nights than I wish to count, buckets of gasoline carting myself back and forth, and at least five parking tickets. I poured these into a bowl and mixed it with a large wooden spoon over the course of two school years and one summer course. But now it's time to take it off the stove.
I have cooked up: 62 credit hours, a 3.47 accumulative GPA (which is outstanding, given my grades in Sr. High), and a membership in an academic fraternity.
I have written a manuscript my creative writing professor swore could be turned into a book, given the addition of 100 pages or so - and Dave Cope is not a man to throw around compliments.
I have increased my theater knowledge 100 fold, acted in one GRCC play, have been cast in a one-act being performed at the end of the month, and deck-crewed two other shows.
I have read and laughed and whittled away all that did not fit me and have gained a much greater understanding of myself and who I am. I AM A MAN.
I read fantastically and can interpret symbolism, allusions, and meaning. I can write like a devil. I can ACT. I can weld and dance, and am learning to do both better. I have gained a greater hunger for God that I hope never leaves me. I have learned to tell what is false and what is insincere and what is bullshit and how to call it as it is. I have seen truth much deeper than most people will ever understand, and I thank God for it.
But as I said, the two years are done, and the oven bell has rung, and it's time to see how my cookery shapes up in a transfer of Colleges.
I am going to Cornerstone - for more reasons than you'd care to hear.
I run the risk of going into debt at least 12,000 dollars. This is a conservative guess, but still a figure my brain is learning how to comprehend.
Barely any of my credits transfer. I always signed up for classes at CC with no greater - or too many - direction(s) in mind.
I will be fifth year Sr. and will have to hold off any plans I might have had or would have liked to have made for at least another year. I will have to pay many more thousands of dollars and continue to give up more of my freedoms for another year. Most of the friends I have who are my age will move on and some will start families and some will move away as I stay here for another year. Staying on the dance floor and repeating these STUPID Academic shimmies and twirls for another year.
A part of me wants to yell, throw chairs at the transfer councilors and powers that be, knock office supplies off desks, drop out and tell them all to rot or shove what in which end.
A part of me wants to think that these two years, these last 24 months, this last one-tenth of my life so far have been wasted. A fortune spent and empty pockets bought. I have purchased real-estate and found I have inherited the wind.
A part of me wants to believe that.




But these last two years have taught me a few things. A few to say the least.

My Funeral

New amendment in the ongoing plans to plan the disposal of my own body.
Put me in a simple pine-board box, lined with the afghan Great grandma crocheted. Carve a few lines praising the Lord's wisdom and grace on the lid. Anybody who feels as though I have impacted their life will go into the woods behind my parent's house in order to find a stick, twig, log, or tree branch. These will be piled atop a pre-stacked pile of wood and charcoal. My coffin will be laid on the very top.
Enough gasoline will be used to ensure the fires success, but no more.
A live recording of Breathe Owl Breathe's "Playing Dead" will be played on speakers as the flames spread.
The fire will take place in the field behind my parents house.
A tree will be planted over my ashes.

Buried Child

This afternoon, I read a play called "Buried Child". It was written by Sam Shepard, whom I will tell you all about and how much I love if given the slightest provocation - which is only slightly untrue. I love his latter plays. He wrote his earlier ones while taking lots of drugs, and so I have a hard time finding substance in them. I'm sure you understand.
"Buried Child" won the Pulitzer Prize (enter "Newsies" reference of your choice here) for Best Play back in '79, and it is very good. But, as you may be able to deduce from its title, it is very troubling in subject matter.
"Disturbing," as my father is fond of commenting after watching certain movies. "Very disturbing." Like most coined phrases of our parents, this one typically caused a slight eye-roll from me upon hearing my father's verdict. I never really understood what he meant by it - until recently I couldn't understand what was "troubling" or "disturbing" about what I was watching. Sure Jack Nicholson is acting weird. He always acts weird. I don't think he is capable of acting normal, even in his serious roles.
What we had just watched might have been scary, or suspenseful, but I could never really see things from my father's point of view - to fully grasp what his words entailed. I'm sorry if this sounds repetitive, but I'm trying to make a point. In my younger teenage years, I was unable to be disturbed.
Whether desensitized by gory movies or the countless comic books I read ( I had no business reading 75% of those I pulled from the Barnes & Nobles shelves) - I was not able to be touched. It was as though I had a switch I could flip. A window to close, to stop letting the breeze of what I was witnessing from reaching me.
But lately I have been beginning to see what my dad was driving at. The typically calm waters of my mood and dwelling-thoughts have been upset periodically. A movie. A play. Poems. News from far away places. I am able to be touched. What does this mean? - Now that I am able to see the potential harm in what I absorb.



It has been said that filmmakers, and artists in general, often reach an age of maturity when all the work the produce follows a certain theme. Spielberg loves Father-Son/young person finds mentor-figure stories. Wes Anderson does movies with quirky characters who learn to embrace/control their flaws and love the people around them. Tarantino does Tarantino-y takes on obscure film genres/cultural references. Woody Allen...you get the picture. Film buffs, connect the threads. This is a fun game to play sometime.
Sam Shepard, though a playwright, has similar themes and characters in his works.
Heritage and family history. The disappearance of the American West as we traditionally know it. The depreciation of that which was once cherished. Insane families.
Who we are because of where and who we came from. How we can never escape our past. How we try to kill off the memories of our parents only to find that we ourselves are driven to extinction in the process.
I hold theories about families that I have personally arrived at.

No one is able to hate anyone else quite like a son is capable of hating his father.
Every son will love their father - even those who hate their dads. Despite the sins that are inherited from one generation to the next, that love still remains, though it may become twisted and marred by pain.
The contempt shared between two brothers is also incalculably strong, though categorically very different.
"A boy's best friend is his Mother or whatever has become his pet."
Family.

Mr. Shepard has an answer for us. Acceptance. Learn to live with where you came and who you are. Combine it with who you are capable of being, and a happy medium may be found. Just remember that a tree cannot live without its roots.

"How to Tell A true War Story"

This post shares a title with a short story by Tim O'Brien I began reading the other day. The essay is nestled between other stories like it -ones about his tour of duty in Viet-Nam.
Though each can stand as an independent work, major motifs carry throughout; namely watching his friends die suddenly and with seeming randomness.
I have read the essay in question before. It's theme is as follows: "If someone is telling you a war story and it has a moral, it's false. If it makes sense, if it has any shred dignity, decency, or humanity in it, it cannot be true. For it to be true it has to be horrific, and senseless and ugly. You cannot learn anything positive about your fellow man from a war story. End of discussion."

Infrequently, I'm asked by certain people to tell them a story. Unless I am in a jovial mood to begin with, I am often stumped. Unable to summon a personal memory on command, I usually consider falling back on the Greek mythology I collected in my younger days. So strange how the story of Mercury stealing Apollo's cattle and the tale of Cupid and Psyche are more readily available - are often more easily grabbed from the cluttered walk-in closet of my memory - than actual events that have happened to me in my own personal life.
Something that happened to me once, that filled my entire world for an hour or moments at a time, that I observed and stored, adding to what I am - something that has affected who I am today? hmm- drawing blanks. How about something that never happened, but people used to explain their surroundings thousands of years ago? Yeah, that's more easy to come by.

Maybe its because on some level, I agree with Tim O'Brien. Real stories often have no moral, or their meaning is hard to sort through, opaque, or perhaps irrelevant and uninteresting to someone who was not changed by it. "Why would you want to hear about it? -What use could you possibly have for something that didn't stress you out, keep you awake at night, or thrill your senses?"
Real morals to our everyday fables? So subjective. Our world is too existential. Maybe that's why I first reach for something that's been told a thousand times. Something more timeless than you or me or minutes of our lives. Something with a prize already wrapped and ready for you to take hope and put on your shelf. Surely that is better than some tattered thing about how my best friend and I were walking in the woods behind his house Junior year of high school when we literately stumbled across this sculpture -some welded giant green goldfish with sparkling scales and fins flapping in invisible water on a five foot pole six inches round. You wouldn't want to hear about how the bottom ended with the jagged line a hacksaw had left -how it was taken from the entrance of a new housing development that was being built just down the road, how it was stolen and then hidden in the woods behind my best friends house. How we hefted it and put it in his basement living room and forgot about it, leaving it to do something else. How his parents called the right people and that it was returned. How it turned out that it cost upwards of 1,500 or so, and how the artist who made it was so grateful that it had been returned honestly after only a few days that he gave my friend's mom the gift of a new piece to put in her garden - a dragon fly or something.

What would be the point of that?

Yes, surely there is no meaning to be leaned from that. Nobody could possibly learn anything from it, or find it interesting, or use it to teach their children anything.

Surely.

Changing Minute Hands in an Empty Library.

I am at the Community College's library.
Less than a block away from the Grand Rapids Main, I feel it is a rarely noticed gem.
Usually bustling during the weekdays, Sunday finds it empty and full of natural light. I stare out the rear window to heritage hill, across the snow-plowed piles and a parking lot. I am alone on the second floor. It is quiet. So quiet. My slide guitar laden music is playing loudly in the headphones I checked out from the front desk. Hours of isolation spent, sandwiched by meals with family and friends. A well way to spend a Sunday afternoon, if you ask me. Light work and personal projects.

About a month ago I made the horrific realization that I had lost a flash-drive with many important works on it. Mainly, it contained the second half (rough draft) of the manuscript I turned in for Creative Writing, as well as the spit-shining-polished final draft of the first half. Easily over 50 man-hours.
This piece had earned hearty praise from my professor, who's opinion I value highly. Visualize doing something you have followed and admired for years, and having a small time expert/part time mentor rave about it. Your reaction is not an ego boost, but rather a instillation of faith in your own talent. The praise telling you that you are good at what you do. Even showing promise.
And I lost most of what I turned in.
Surprisingly, I am not as down as you'd expect about the whole thing.
I remember what I wrote about - just not in the exact same words. I can rebuild the broken wall - the house will just end up looking different than it initially would.
Early in his career, Ernest Hemingway wrote the Nick Adams stories - but then lost the entire collection during...I think it was a cross-country move. Not one copy of them remained. What we know today is the rewriting of those stories from memory. Sure Hemingway was a literary icon - but his story gives me hope.

Waves destroy sandcastles. Hurricanes destroy cities. What causes us to rebuild? Keep living and raising children after our parents have died? Wash off the mud.

"What a curious life we have found here tonight there is music that sounds from the street."

"And so this is Christmas."

Last night was the long, lively chain of Christmas Eve services, the finale of which commenced at 11 o'clock in the evening, ending with a royal "Joy to the World" at approximately midnight, making it Christmas day.

The auditorium was packed. Sitting in the front, between my mother and the mother of my best friend, I stood just before the service started and gazed back across the tops of everybody's heads, picking out those that I knew and recognizing with tangible evidence just how God has blessed my life through the people he has placed in the path he has for me.

My spirit soared, gaining new heights of levity that it has not known for sometime. A meal for my soul? A buffet of joy and love, and I took my absolute fill. Biting into the softer meat of substance, I laughed and let the juices drip out the corners of my mouth and down my chin. It was so good to be alive - to know how much I love and am loved - the kicker of "It's a Wonderful Life" - You and you and you and YOU and you too!

Our world is so broken, so tragically broken in so many ways. We are in such need of saving, so incapable of self rescue. Advent and Christmas celebrate the duality of these ideas. The pining wait for a savior and the uninhibited joy celebrating the memory of his arrival.

In a way, the Christmas eve service and the weeks preceding it served as a miniature Advent and Christmas on a personal level. A few weeks filled with a sense of isolation; of occasional sensations of helplessness and fleeting moments of despair, followed by the sudden re-realization of happiness, love, and unity with all those around me.

The loud, musical reminder of my own need for a savior and the fact that I already have him.
What a fitting thing to relearn less than a week before a new year dawns.

If one were to remember how they are loved all the year round, they would truly be blessed indeed. Loved by God and man both -so utterly blessed.

"What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all 'round the sun.
And when we meet on a cloud, I'll be laughing out loud-
I'll be laughing with everyone I see.
Can't believe,
How strange it is to be anything at all."

The Aura Unexplained

I once met a kid who said he could sense other people's auras -the color their soul (essence, personality, identity) gave off. By looking closely he could tell what the quality of your heart was -the ultimate, irrefutable personality test that smells strongly of the spiritual world.

I do not know how much you believe in Angels, Demons, or the roles they play in our lives, but what this guy picked up was closely akin to that. In some, he could sense evil or Godliness. He could feel the negative dark around those who had surrounded themselves with the bad. He told a few of the people we were with about themselves, and accurately.

I did not ask who he perceived me to be -which was odd looking back, considering my struggle to find identity at the time. I would have liked him to tell me who I was -so that I would have some sort of idea at all.

But daily I am figuring out who I am, and aptly.

Would you like to know?
Camus said "No man dares describe himself as he truly is."
Maybe I am as diluted as all that...

None the less,

I know in my core I was destined for something larger than nine to fiveing, paying my pension plan and retiring in Florida. But how many other believers can say the same?

Sometimes I feel strength in my hands that shocks me -the power to change much and many.
Other times I wallow in the mire of despondency, indulge my insecurities, let the moody blues drag me deep, fuel my anger's fire.


I just want to be extraordinary.

Numb-skulled

In those days, your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams...

What I wouldn't give for a dream that would find its roots stretching far and deep, rooted in reality. If only if in the deepest spot in the deepest crack between my dreams' deepest roots there was not dirt of sleeping thoughts but the smallest grain of the deep deep reality.

"For what dreams may come after we have shuffled off this mortal coil?"

If I did not believe in God, I would be as existential as your albino friend. But what to do when those close find themselves slipping their arms from the life vest, doubting if the surface is really where they want to be -asking themselves and others out loud if they can call themselves one of those who do not sink if they truly question the act of floating.

Do I sound drunk? Altered?
Every once in a while I find my sober thoughts are rather similar to drunk ones. Such is the nature of my mind.

I struggle.
It may be a secret.
A secret only kept because I keep to myself -the walls may have ears but I find them indifferent audiences. Mostly I'm afraid of how they talk after I've been hanging with them too long.

I need to get out more.

And now we grab the circus wheel...

My philosophy research paper was assigned 2 months ago.

I had only picked it up every now and then, only to set it down because it stressed me out up until last Friday. Work officially began yesterday at 5 p.m. I took a 4 hour brake at 8:30 to go to Evensong and get coffee with Nick and Kris afterward. Guy talk. I saw it as more important, and I maintain the ruling even now.

Work recommenced, went until 4:00, wherein I finished my works cited page and found myself oddly satisfied despite my C- paper. I was in bed by 4:30, and set my alarm clock to 7:00 in order to get up and do homework for my Com class. Needless to say, I rolled over a few times and it was 8:00. The intervening time was spent in a motley combination of Snooze hitting, mass disorientation and vivid dreams of Sunday School teachers getting into vehement debates over the props i had created for the week.

Some were intensely dissatisfied and demanded changes on the spot because they transgressed some crucial theological issue that their conservative seminary schooling had clearly stipulated against. "No, you don't understand! This is a serious infringement of this or that obscure tenet! We surely cannot say we endorse that theology..."

The other Sunday School teachers maintained that it was not all that serious of an issue, but they had never gone to seminary and were unsure of themselves in this argument.


I know, right?


I woke up, tossed some eggs on the stove, drank some weak tea, whipped through my homework in order to don the same clothes I wore yesterday, not take a shower, and sprint out the door.

Communications was canceled.

But now I have two hours to write, and stare out the widows at the rather pretty snow falling.

As I walked to class this morning, I was alone on the sidewalk. No other walkers or bike riding commuters. The cold has driven them in. When I went outside last night, just to stand out in the 4:00 Eastown morning, I was alone, save for somebody howl-singing a somewhere near and yet distant.

I am at peace.

Grand Rapids sleeps in under thick blankets.

Thought Block

If I were riding the metro rail, the recorded announcing voice would have just called out: "Leaving: Comfortable. Next Stop: The Wire."

Tense, high pitched violins tremble, indicating an imminent attack (under the water's surface/around the corner in the vacant, darkened house)

Sure they were assigned two months ago, but actually working on assignments are for sissies.

Three weeks:
One group project with an essay.
A research paper.

One week:
Hamlet
A Philosophy paper

Need to Do:
Late assignments
Work on my creative writing manuscript
Edit the poop out of a One-act I wrote in time to submit it to CC's semi-annual literary journal
The odd five-page aptitude test for my academic adviser
Apply to Cornerstone
Choose a major
Read my Bible
Pray
Apply myself to everything I do
Worship God
Stay the type of person I could like if I knew them
Occasionally call my friends and remind them how much they mean to me
Bathe.


But music helps.
And I've played so much Tetris in the last 48 hours I can see descending multi-colored blocks locking into place as I read my textbook, or write this.
Concentration is impossible.

My Cousin Dylan

Dylan and I were close growing up. Just a year and a half older than me, we wrestled on trampolines and in basements on Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters for as long as I can remember.

He was always stronger, always faster, always beating my brother and I in backyard football. In hide-and-seek he was nowhere to be found. He ran cross-country and went to state his Sr. year of High School. Division One.

Funny? I thought he was hysterical. Homecoming King. Popular. Good looking. The girls adored him. He worked at either Abecrombie or American Eagle for what felt like a year in High School -I can't remember which. His graduation open house was more like a block party.

My freshmen year he was close friends with the girl I had a massive, heart-bleeding crush on. I sat in his room one afternoon, slumped in some teenage fit of moodiness, staring at the pictures on his wall of them on spring break together in some tropical location.

Last April I was at the surprise birthday of that same girl -we're friends now. A sister of one her friends went to high school with Dylan, and asked what he was "doing these days."

I told her he was in Fallujah with the Marine Corps -And he was.

This Saturday he came home, safe and sound. I did not know how much I loved him until he came out of his gate, and hugged each family member in turn.

Corporal Dylan Manion, just off a tour of duty with the Scout Snipers. Fresh from the sands of Iraq and freezing in this premature November snow.

We left the airport, my massive family choking the streets in entourage, and ate pizza on a long row of tables in a restaurant in East Kentwood.

Dylan was generous in answering the probings of his Aunts and Uncles, though as a whole somewhat tight lipped. As much can be expected. Between appetizers and the entree he held his baby niece for the first time.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, he will be in Afghanistan before his twenty third birthday come this September.

Though he is safe and out of harms way for the time being, I am worried about him. How he is inside. What wounds we cannot see, and how what he has seen will be processed in time.

While we sat around the tables, eating and laughing as an extended family, celebrating the return of a grandchild, a nephew, a cousin, a brother, and to one of us, and uncle, there was across town a funeral for another veteran of the same war who came home too, but didn't make it after all. I know this because my father was asked to do the funeral and had to say no.

I love my cousin Dylan. Now I pray for him every night.

A long day indeed.

Today a lady read from a book that she wrote. A man, the picture of collection, cried briefly, quietly, at my elbow. And the sun outside shown bright and warm.

I felt the bursting of life I have not felt in a while -my very seams shining light from within.

I heard that my own voice is more than just drops in a well, behind your parent's farm, where no children play anymore. I am grateful for this fact.

But then the bags beneath my eyes sagged a little more, darkening to bruised colors, the way they do. The edge of the wheel, once high above the earth, then in the mud, soon to carry on.

I find that I have recently become a twitcher -a shaker or bouncer of legs when sitting. Once, in an archaic dictionary, I found the obscure name for this action. The "devil's tattoo." Demons playing marching beats to your constant, rhythmic motions.
Big Dan once told me that he rocked his body back and forth because he had pneumonia for 8 months when he was a child, and his tall bodied father would return home from work and use the same rhythmic motions to soothe Dan to sleep. Why do I move the way I do now?

Today we voted. Some cry out in anguish, others in optimism. Some bury their faces, and others lift their eyes up to the light. We project our pictures of God and Satan on human beings so easily. We seem to forget who is in control. We seem to forget who can or cannot save us, body or soul.

For me: I see people fighting in the streets and forests of other countries. Will we be spared from such a fate, such cave dwelling? Here, on our own city blocks, in some future's distant mist?

I wait for my love, my future wife, the one whom will radically change my life.
But I also can see myself dying young, tomorrow, or the next, in a traffic accident, a stray bullet through my apartment's window, an air conditioning unit falling from a window stories above.

No matter the date of my demise, either near or far, before you lower me into the eath, have them carve on the lid of my pine board box:
"How great is the Creator? Who knows what shape I may take, or where I will go, or what I may see there?"
Bury my body beneath a tree that will grow large, so that in time it may lower its roots and cradle me in its loving arms. Me? I will be somewhere else entirely. For, "I have no soul. I am a soul. I merely have a body."

In between

Just a few minute post before the grind of the week begins to grind me up. I am a man on a year-long assembly line, standing at my spot, turning screws and tightening bolts accordingly -hoping all the while it is in fact I who am changed. The weekend is over, but the week has not yet started.

My walls and floors are paper thin. Last night I laid awake while my cousin and her boyfriend watched a movie on a laptop across the hall. The neighbors across the narrow ally from my bedroom kept the party rocking until two. This afternoon I read at the kitchen table, my cousin in the room to my left, and my neighbor in the basement to the right, both talking on phones at the same time, both highly audible, while I read of loneliness in characters so deep the room I was in grew by city blocks.

This is all for now, but a manuscript is coming.

A cough can rattle my chest -and it looks like it's going to get worse, for a week or two.
Causing me to think of all those old romantics, torn apart by TB.

Punctuation, or over doing it for emphases, makes me feel poetic at times.
I've been writing lately, and loving it -but wish I was doing more of it.

I am optimistic of my future, a warm blanket when I am alone at night.
Working with children causes me to want them for my own
-An oddity for a single, 20 year old, boy.
Waiting for my future wife
Like a long distant phone call
In this too, I am optimistic, again, an oddity.

A week ago I felt the snap of Beat Poetry's jazz percussion.
This week I feel tired -and in love-
I value my friends all the greater.

Dave Cope introduced me to Gertrude Stein.
I have never before seen someone write without pain.

At the end of this early October day

Tonight I am tired, and putting off homework to write instead. A near tie, it lags just behind talking with my close friends and dearly loved ones as the foremost action I can take in order to screw my head on strait.
Tonight I am tired, and already logged well over my due 20 hours at the church, and am beginning to fall behind in my school work -tomorrow I shall leave my internship with the Children's ministry early, and play a game of catch up with the classes I am doing poorly in.
Just last year I learned the pleasure of being a good student for the first time. To see my grades hurt now is salt in the eyes and teeth gritted tight.
Tonight we had our first Discovery Village Family Experience (DVFX) of the year. I had a speaking role this time round, and felt the thrills that only theater can afford. Oh, how I miss the medium of acting.
My food will go bad before I can eat it, and somehow this fills me with melancholy. Simultaneously, my battered victim of a wallet only affords the food within my kitchen. Tonight, my stomach is forced to do with cold refried beans; the ones from the can. Somehow this feels a fitting retribution for those suffering from hunger in other worlds.
Nate, the 25 year old who lives in the basement's apartment, is going through a break-up. His typically sunny disposition is soiled and gray. He talks loudly and can be heard through the floorboards at night. He's been drinking too much lately. I realize this is the result of finding your identity in your relationships. It causes me to wonder how I unwittingly seek an empty fulfillment in my own ways. A few obvious answers come to mind.
I am writing a piece of work for my creative writing class. It is a collection of short-short stories, "micro fiction" is the term, I've been told. I am extremely proud of my work. In all my years of reading good and great literature, I feel an extreme sense of accomplishment to think that something, anything, I could ever produce on my own would ever be considered half-way decent by my own standards. Again, I am proud.
But I feel as though I cannot share it with my family, but more so with my father, whom I honor above every other human, and who loves a good book like warm blanket.
What I have written...
It's dirty. And crass. And dark, and at parts disturbing. But it is also autobiographical, and so accurate to my thoughts and feelings, and revealing. Like taking off your clothes in front of a crowd of people who know you and showing them your body as much different than they thought it'd be -with scars and stains from nights they never knew you'd lived.

In all this, I am happy. Life is being lived in a manner I do not think I have grasped it thightly before. I wring it -and it is mine.

"Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes"

I've been listening to that song lately; the one by Paul Simon. "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes." It's carefree and ethnic in the way he does in "Goodbye Rosie,"
and can never fail to serve as a pick-me-up.
"Diamonds" is about a rich girl and a poor boy and how they "end up sleeping in a doorway." Eventually the boy learns to walk with diamonds on the souls of his shoes too, thus "curing these walking blues."
I like to think the song is about learning to live in a state of contentment with the world -and love being the vehicle to help you arrive at that mindset.
And the other day, as I was running into CC, and the skies were gray and it was cold and of the first of the true days of fall, I saw there, on the steps, just in front of the great sets of double doors, a girl curled up and sleeping on the lap of her boy. He was awake and staring out and stroking her hair.
I've seen them a couple of times before, but never without the other. The boy's face is impassive, and looks for all the world like a slightly Asian version of John Lennon behind his small round glasses. The girls face is round, beautiful, and innocent. I have never heard either of them speak.
Curled up in that doorway, they felt in love -both in the way of the very young and the very old, simultaneously.
Sometimes I'm tempted to listen to those who say we can cure this disease that ails man with love alone.
But then I remember that very few people have the capacity to hate with the intensity that former lovers and family members possess. Look at the headlines. Only in extreme circumstances does a brutally murdered victim not know their attacker. Ex boyfriends and husbands. Spouses. Siblings. Step children.
But I'd still like to believe in something as optimistic as love, or the idea of finding peace in the company of another. The fact that we are indeed capable of saving ourselves with our goodness.

But what is "good?" Can you define it by a universal standard?
What happened to the idea of morality? Ethics? These are honest questions.

The other day I actually got in an argument over the sanctity of human life. It was in philosophy class, of all places. It was easily the most worked up I've been in a while; and it truly felt good inside to have a belief actually worth fighting for.
Life is not cheap. The mind body and soul of another human being is no trivial matter. Is it so hard to reach within ourselves and find decency and respect for our fellow man? This is a question apart from my religion.
Relativism cannot give an answer. It cannot cure what ails us. It is watching our house on fire from the front lawn as our children and spouse burn inside with all of our possessions. It is a young man's luxury to hold it in contempt as I do.
But that alone does nothing to heal.
Stitch up our split skin. Our puncture wounds. Our hammered faces.


What can you do?

The sticky truth seeps out between the cracks of my stony surface; a syrup that leaks from some unknown internal break. Its drops accumulate and drip over time, leaving a darkly dotted trail of where I've been, and if read correctly, one may accurately estimate where I'm going. I'm worried about staying in one place for too long -about parking my body in one place until the drops gather to form a puddle, staining the concrete for months afterward. I leave oil stains on carpets and bottoms of chairs all across Michigan.
To combat this, or rather to out run it, I stay on the move. Driving is my favorite method. You can measure the time I've spent in transit by the stack of books on tape I've borrowed from the library and finished. Laying them in a row from beginning to end, I cannot seem to remember all of their titles, but I am certain these are among them: Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy, Treasure Island, Red Dragon, Atonement, About a Boy, Cannery Row, The Lovely Bones. I drive to fill the hours of the day, audible books that I can not access in any other way have become by friend.
All this to say that I have become dreadfully lonely. I feel so isolated. Bloated with stupidity, quick anger, and a cumbersome social awkwardness. I dislike the route my existence has taken- days filled with me trying to fill my hunger for food, entertainment, and seeking company. But the hunger for company cannot be satisfied. I string together a series of acquaintances that remain at a distance -adequately removed from my thoughts and at times, silent desperation.



I hate this.